High Tide
by LittleFairy78
Summary: It all started with a fight. Shawn leaves town for a few days, only to find his life cruelly changed upon his return. He tries to get to the bottom of what happened, but everybody else thinks he's just in denial. Shawn angst...
1. Prologue

Summary: It had all started out with a fight. Nothing unusual, they fought all the time, like cats and dogs. It wasn't always as serious as it had been this time, but still. They had had worse fights before.

But Shawn has enough and decides to take a few days off to get his head clear again. After all, he's in between cases, he can take the time.

What he didn't consider, however, is that when he comes back to Santa Barbara a few days later, his life has changed drastically, and he wasn't even there when it happened.

Shawn flat out refuses to believe the official version of what has transpired, but nobody seems to share his doubts about what supposedly happened. Nevertheless, Shawn won't give up his attempts to get to the bottom of the matter, but could he be wrong this time?

Could it be that he's too involved emotionally to see that sometimes it doesn't take a complicated explanation to shed light on a simple matter?

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

Sometimes, an accident at sea doesn't leave a body behind.

And sometimes, even Shawn Spencer is wrong.

**High Tide**

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

**Prologue: There's no need to tell your mother about this**

_The Pacific Ocean, 1985_

_It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining despite some clouds in the sky, it promised to become warm well before noon, the sea wasn't entirely quiet, yet not too rough, either, and Henry Spencer was out on his boat._

_Now, Henry probably would have enjoyed being on his boat even if the weather had been worse, but that was another matter entirely. Fishing was about relaxation, not about fun, but it was a basic principle that relaxation simply was more fun if the weather was better._

_Henry lodged his fishing rod underneath the small bench in his boat which he was sitting on so that he had both his hands free, then he reached for the thermos and poured himself a cup of strong coffee. A small smile started playing around the corners of his mouth as he watched his eight year old son sit opposite of him, his own fishing rod clutched tightly with both hands, so very obviously struggling to keep his eyes open._

_Shawn had protested against being woken at five in the morning on a Saturday, but Henry hadn't relented this time. For a kid like Shawn, fishing was the perfect training. In all his seven years of life, Shawn had probably never sat still more than half an hour, and he hadn't remained silent for more than ten minutes. Not when he was awake, anyway. It was a good training for his later life, Shawn needed to learn how to keep quiet and still for longer periods of time. A cop on a stakeout couldn't bounce around and talk at great length and volume about the last episode of _Bonanza_, either._

_"You want some hot chocolate?", Henry asked, his voice low, and reached for the second thermos flask in the bag beneath his seat._

_Shawn's hazel eyes tiredly opened the fragment of an inch and Henry could have sworn Shawn glared at him._

_"No. I wanna go home. I'm cold, I'm tired, and fishing is stupid."_

_Unlike his father, Shawn didn't bother with keeping his voice down, and while silence wasn't as important while fishing on the ocean as it was while fishing on a lake, Henry nevertheless levelled a stern gaze at his son._

_"Shawn, keep your voice down. And right now, I don't care whether or not you think fishing is stupid, because it is what we're doing right now. And we won't take this boat home until both of us have caught something, so you might as well start taking it seriously. I for one don't mind staying out here on the ocean for the entire day."_

_Shawn's eyes widened. "You said we'd be back at noon. At noon at latest, you said. You know that I want to go to Gus' place after lunch!"_

_"Shawn, I won't tell you again to keep your voice down. Just use what I taught you about fishing and we won't have to be here for long. Just look at your fishing rod, kid. The line is entirely too slack, that way you won't even notice if a fish bites."_

_"I don't care about the stupid fish. You're mean!"_

_"No Shawn. If I was mean, I'd have forced you to wear the life-jacket, just like your mother insisted you do. All I want is for you to focus on what you're doing."_

_Shawn rolled his eyes. "But it's just fishing. You toss out a bait, you wait and wait and wait until a fish is stupid enough __**not**__ to see the huge metal hook that goes through the worm, and then you haul them in. It's stupid and it's boring."_

_"Shawn…", Henry said in what he knew Shawn recognised as a warning tone. But Shawn was on a roll and wasn't ready to stop._

_"It's the weekend. I wanna sleep. Everybody lets their kids sleep in on weekends, but you take me to a stupid fishing tour in the middle of the night! It's not fair!"_

_Shawn jumped off his seat, bringing the boat slightly off balance. It swayed from the left to the right for a moment, but not heavily enough to worry Henry. He pointed a finger at his son and drew breath to give Shawn a little lecture about what exactly wasn't fair, when suddenly a wave that was slightly larger than the previous ones hit the boat's starboard side._

_The wave stopped the boat's initial movement towards starboard short and sent it swaying back to port, a subtle and yet heavy enough change to make Shawn loose his balance. His words about Shawn better being a bit more grateful that Henry took the time to teach him fishing died on Henry's tongue as he saw his son sway for a moment, then fall over the side of the boat and into the water._

_It was a shock, but it wouldn't have been bad normally. Shawn was a good swimmer for his age, he'd have no problem surfacing and swimming back to the boat even without the lifejacket his mother deemed necessary for whenever he was out on the ocean. But before Shawn toppled overboard Henry heard the dull sound that told him Shawn had hit his head on the boat before he went over._

_One moment Shawn was standing there, in his jeans and sweater, glaring at his father, the next he was in the water and Henry could no longer see him._

_Henry didn't even think about it before he dove into the water after his son. The waves closed over his head as he dove down where he had seen Shawn hit the water, hoping to grab his son before an undercurrent tore him away._

_Henry couldn't see much underwater, so he blindly grabbed with both hands until his fingers closed around the fabric of his son's sweater. Making sure he was holding onto Shawn and not merely the fabric, Henry kicked to the surface as fast as he could. As soon as their heads broke the water, Shawn started to wheeze and cough at the same time._

_The boat was already drifting a few feet away, so with a tight grip around his son's chest Henry started swimming towards it. When he had reached it, he helped Shawn climb into it, then heaved himself onboard again._

_He didn't even notice his spilled coffee soaking into his pants in addition to the sea water as he knelt in front of his son's seat and framed Shawn's head with his hands._

_"Shawn, can you hear me?"_

_Shawn was still hacking and coughing, and Henry gently slapped his back until his son's breathing was back to normal. Then he took some more time to examine Shawn. Gently, he ran his fingers along Shawn's scalp, searching for the place where Shawn had hit the boat on his way down. The seven year old boy hissed loudly as Henry's gentle fingers encountered the sizeable lump on the right side of his head. But there was no blood, at least that was something._

_Framing Shawn's face with his hands, Henry waited until the boy looked at him._

_"Are you all right?"_

_Shawn shrugged and nodded at the same time, then he shook his head. All right, Henry knew he wouldn't get any farther this way._

_"Does anything hurt besides your head?"_

_This time, Shawn gave a clear shake of his head as an answer and Henry sighed in relief._

_Both were sopping wet, but Henry barely noticed his own state of discomfort as he took a closer look at his son. Shawn stood there, pale and shaking, dropping wet, his hair plastered to his head, and suddenly the reality of what could have happened caught up with Henry. Shawn had been too dazed by the blow to his head to kick back to the surface, if Henry hadn't caught him he could have lost Shawn…It was a thought Henry didn't even dare to think._

_Shawn's chin started to wobble, and he was avoiding to look into his father's eyes, as if he was worried that another lecture was only moments away, but a lecture was the last thing Henry had on his mind right now. He sank back into his seat because his knees suddenly felt suspiciously wobbly._

_"Sorry", Shawn mumbled._

_Henry's head shot up, startled. Shawn was still studying the pattern of the boat's wooden planks, and that was when something inside of Henry snapped. He reached for his son's shoulders and pulled Shawn against himself in a bone-crashing bear hug._

_Shawn was startled for a moment, but then a sob broke free and he melted into his father's arms. Henry pulled his crying son into his lap and held him tightly, as tightly as he wished he could have held him before he had fallen into the water in the first place._

_"It's not your fault, kid. I should have paid better attention."_

_Shawn continued to cry into his father's shoulder for some minutes, and all Henry could do was hold his son and rub his back soothingly. When Shawn calmed down a little, Henry withdrew from the embrace just far enough so that he could look into his son's eyes._

_"How's the head?"_

_Shawn shrugged and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Hurts. A little."_

_"Are you seeing double? Anything wrong with your vision?"_

_"No."_

_"Anything else that's hurting?"_

_Shawn shook his head. "No."_

_"Good. Then let's get you out of those sodden clothes."_

_Shawn reluctantly disentangled from his father just enough that Henry could turn and open the small compartment in the boat's stern. After a little rummaging around Henry found a towel he could use._

_He helped Shawn shrug out of his wet jeans and sweater, then rubbed him dry as much as he could with the towel. Henry's own sweater had thankfully remained dry because he had taken it off earlier, and now he pulled it over Shawn's head. The large sweater reached Shawn's knees, but at least it was dry and relatively warm. Shawn sat back in his seat and pulled his knees up to his chest, getting as much of his legs underneath the sweater as possible._

_Henry shrugged out of his own clothing, squeezed as much water out of it as he could, then spread it over the stern of the boat. He repeated the same with Shawn's clothes, then he reeled in their fishing lines and stowed the rods away._

_"All right, I'd say we head home. Our clothes should be dry by the time we get back. Here…", he rummaged around in the cooler, took out some ice and wrapped it in the towel. "Put that against the lump on your head, and tell me immediately if the pain gets worse or you start seeing things blurry."_

_Shawn nodded, pulling his knees a little more closely against himself. "Okay." He thought for a moment. "Do we need to tell Mom about this? She's going to freak."_

_Henry chuckled. "Promise, and I mean _promise_, that you'll tell me if your headache gets worse?"_

_"Promise."_

_"Then we don't need to tell her, not if it doesn't."_

_Shawn smiled. "Good."  
Henry answered the smile with one of his own. "And at least we both learned something from this."_

_"Really? What's that?"_

_"Well, you learned one important lesson about going out on a boat. It's always one hand for the boat, one hand for yourself."_

_Shawn rolled his eyes. "And what did you learn?"_

_"My lesson was that sometimes your mother is right. Next time, you _**are**_ going to wear that life-jacket."_

_Shawn's eyes widened. "There's going to be a next time?"_

_Henry chuckled as he started the boat's engine and turned them back towards the land. "You bet there will be a next time, Shawn. You still haven't caught a fish yet. Next Saturday we'll be out again if it doesn't rain, bright and early at half past five."_

_Shawn groaned and sank lower into his seat as Henry steered the boat back towards Santa Barbara._


	2. The Long Ride Back Home

This story starts pretty much right in the middle. And the randomly thrown in sentences in italics should be pretty self-explanatory, it's when Shawn's thinking back on what happened between him and his dad. It's actually not that important for the story what they are fighting about, the situation that caused the fight in the first place isn't integral for understanding this story, and you'll get to know the basics of what it's all about.

**Chapter 1**** – The Long Ride Back Home**

Shawn loved his bike. Back in the day, he had saved money for over a year before he had had enough to buy the motorcycle he had wanted for so long. And even once he had it, he had put all his money and spare time into getting it into the best condition it could be in. He had replaced parts, had taken the entire engine apart and reconstructed it again, had cleaned and polished every single part by hand. He loved the bike. If his father didn't hate the bike as much as he did, even he would have to admit that there was one thing in his life Shawn had finished and stuck with.

Shawn cursed himself for allowing that thought.

As much as he loved being out on the bike, with nothing to worry about but whether or not he'd make it to the next gas station, driving around aimlessly also gave his mind far too much time to think. And there was hardly anything else he had thought about more often during the past three days than his father. He really didn't want to think any more about him. Especially not about the long list of disappointments he had accumulated as far as Henry Spencer was concerned.

_"__I really didn't think you'd be able to add yet another disappointment to the list, Shawn. I honestly thought the whole fake psychic act had been the worst you came up with. But once again I was wrong. What is wrong with you, Shawn? Are you so shocked that people really bought your whole crack and bull story and you're no longer in immediate danger of being found out? Is the excitement out of the whole thing?"_

_"Dad, this is not what this is all about and you…"_

_"No Shawn, this is exactly what it's all about. You need the excitement. You need to stand in the spotlight, you can't just stand at the sidelines and leave the stage to others. Because you need everybody's attention focussed on you, and you alone. You just couldn't stand that you weren't the centre of this case, so you had to make yourself the centre of it, no matter at what cost! But the irresponsibility which you've shown this time just beats it all."_

Shawn shook his head as if to physically clear it of the memories and continued along the highway.

It was three days since he had left Santa Barbara after his fight with his father, and still he couldn't quite get it out of his head. Even though that was what he had left the city for in the first place. But not even three days with an old buddy up in San Francisco had been able to help him clear his head. Just like his father to haunt him even when he tried to escape him.

_"That's not true!"_

_"Yes Shawn, it is. Don't you think it's about time you made some choices? Like the choice whether you really want to remain a liar and a cheater for the rest of your career? Maybe it's time to run again. That's what you do when things get out of hand, don't you? You run. Maybe it's about time you run away from this whole psychic business, get away somewhere where people don't recognise you and you can start a new life as a ski-lift operator, or a water-yoga instructor. Because then at least you don't bring people in danger. Or do you honestly want to risk a situation like today getting really out of hand?"_

Not that he had run. He had simply left for a few days to get his head clear. After all, Psych was in between cases after those drug dealers had been arrested in that warehouse.

And the one thing Shawn really hadn't needed after this case had been his father's accusations. Yes, he had gone to that warehouse to investigate, and yes, he had taken Gus along. But there had been no way for him to know that they were being followed, or that those goons would start firing at Gus and him. It wasn't that Shawn sought out those kinds of situations.

And besides, they had called Jules as soon as the first shot had rang through that alley, and the only thing that had ended up with a bullet hole had been the rear fender of Gus' car. Nothing else. But of course his Dad had gotten to know. How, Shawn had no idea. Probably the old man still had a police scanner around and listened to it all evening whenever there was nothing else on TV. Not that Shawn cared.

_"Dad, I had it under control the entire time!"_

_"The last time you had anything under control, you were still in Elementary School. Gus and you could have died today, don't you understand that? Just because you needed to check out a lead. If you were a cop you didn't need to check out leads like that, you could investigate them the real way."_

_"That's what it all ever comes back to, isn't it? That I didn't become a cop. That I'm the big disappointment in Henry Spencer's life. The boy who didn't want to become like his father."_

_"No Shawn, the problem is not that you're not a cop, the problem is that you're doing a cop's work even though you aren't one. Without backup. Without responsibility! You don't think ahead, you don't plan. Never have, never will. And that was all right for as long as it was only your own life you were ruining. Didn't throw too good a light on me, but at least you weren't endangering anybody. But now? What does it take for you to see reason, Shawn? Gus, lying in a pool of his own blood?"_

_"Stop it, Dad!"_

_"No, I won't! Those people shot at you. They wanted to kill you. I most certainly won't stop trying to make you see reason!"_

_"You don't want me to see reason, you want me to adopt your opinion. Because that's the only opinion that counts. What I think never mattered to you anyway, so just leave me alone."_

That was all it ever came down to. Whatever Shawn did, it just never was enough for his father. And why? Because he wasn't a cop. Because he had dared to defy his father in the one thing Henry Spencer had ever cared about – grooming and training his son into becoming a cop.

Well, tough luck there, Dad.

Shawn no longer cared about what his father thought. He no longer cared about the constant ranting, about the constant reproaches and criticism his father levelled at him. Every mistake he made, his father chewed him out for, just as if he was still seven years old. But the good thing he did? The times when what he did helped solve cases that wouldn't get solved otherwise? Even when Shawn used the skills his father had taught him to do so, it never was enough for Henry. Because he wasn't using the skills his father had taught him the way his father wanted him to use them.

The air of that man!

He was thirty years old, for crying out loud. He didn't need his father's approval for what he did, and how he did it. For the past year and a half he had stuck with one job, a job he was damn good at. And the one time something unforeseen had happened, his father used it as yet another reason to belittle everything Shawn had ever done in his life.

But no longer.

If there was one thing Shawn had gotten perfectly clear about during the past three days up in San Francisco, then it was that he'd no longer give his father the merest chance to interfere in everything he did. And he most certainly wouldn't ask his father for help on a case _ever_ again. Right now he didn't even have the least desire to see his father.

Not that it would be difficult. There had been times when he hadn't talked to his father in months, even longer. When he had first moved out, at the age of eighteen for example. Right after his ever-so-righteous father had arrested him for borrowing the car without asking. And a little over eighteen months ago, they had still been living in the same city for over a year without as much as talking a word. Not that their contact in between had been overly great or friendly, either.

Shawn had simply been stupid to believe that anything could change about their relationship, no matter that they had had regular contact over the past one and a half years. Things like that didn't change. Not with his dad. Henry Spencer didn't do changes, especially not where his son was concerned. And Shawn was completely and entirely fed up with it. He wouldn't play along with those stupid games anymore. Let his father count the hats in the room himself, the time when Shawn was jumping through loops for him was definitely over.

Shawn pulled his bike over as the next gas station came up and started filling the tank. Another half hour and he'd be back in Santa Barbara. Back to his answering machine and cell phone, where his Dad probably had left about a hundred angry messages.

Gus surely hadn't left any message. Not that Shawn blamed him. He had put his sales routes on hold during the days they had been working the drug case – a fact he had been constantly complaining about. And then there was that little matter about the bullet hole in the Yaris. Gus had been more pissed about his company getting shot than about some drug dealer shooting at him. Years of experience had taught Shawn that Gus needed a few days to cool off after people shot at him. He hadn't talked to Shawn for over a week after that second time at the Mexican border.

Forty minutes later, Shawn was back in Santa Barbara, parked his car into a legal spot in front of his apartment building, grabbed his helmet and backpack and climbed up the two flights of stairs. Once he was inside his apartment, he tossed his helmet and his jacket onto the sofa, went into the kitchen to grab himself a can of soda from the fridge, then took a deep breath and went over to the answering machine to check for messages.

The little red light was blinking in a rhythm fast enough to make most local DJs proud. The display showed Shawn that he had nineteen new messages. Shawn raised an eyebrow. This time, his Dad had clearly outdone himself. Sure, Shawn had stormed out in the middle of their argument, a sure way to piss his father off, but nineteen messages in three days? This was unprecedented so far. Not really wanting to know, but curious nevertheless, Shawn picked up his cell phone from the charger and checked the display. Twenty-four missed calls, ten new messages and the little envelope symbol was flashing, showing that there were more messages waiting. He was pretty sure the messages were informing him of new voicemail messages waiting for him.

Darn, so much for no longer letting his Dad get to him.

After a quick inner debate, Shawn decided to start with the answering machine. He sat down, took a deep swig of the soda and pressed the button on the answering machine.

"_Shawn, our discussion is not finished!_", his father's voice rang through the apartment. "_You think that storming off and switching off your cell phone is going to get you anywhere? Tough luck, kid. Why don't you finally grow up?_"

There was a beep, then the next message started playing. His father again, probably later that day. None the less angry, though. The next few messages were pretty much the same, his father yelling onto his answering machine because Shawn was no longer there to yell at directly.

As his father's voice droned on through the apartment, Shawn started checking his voicemails. The same little game going on there – his Dad taking up space on the memory chip. Shawn listened with half an ear to his answering machine and his voicemail, not really paying any attention to what his father said on either. He'd just get the messages played to see that he didn't miss anything important, then he'd erase them all and ignore all incoming calls from either his father's cell or landline.

His father wasn't yelling on all the messages, fortunately. After a while he seemed to have settled on calling to see if Shawn would pick up before the answering machine but didn't leave a message.

It was Gus' voice that tore Shawn out of the stupor of drinking soda while not listening to his messages.

"_Shawn, it's me. Pick up the phone. It's important._" There was a pause. "_Call me as soon as you get this message. It's important._"

Probably it was about the bullet hole in his car. Shawn rolled his eyes. One little hole that Gus could easily explain to his insurance company, and he was freaking out again. Shawn rolled his eyes and played the next message on his cell phone.

"_Shawn, it's Gus. Call me as soon as you get this. Urgently._"

That message had arrived on Tuesday, the morning after Shawn had left Santa Barbara. At ten, when Gus should have been at work. Shawn frowned, but continued to listen. There were more messages from Gus, all telling him to call him back as soon as possible, one every hour either on his cell or landline. A bad feeling started to settle in his stomach.

"_Mr. Spencer, this is Chief Vick. Obviously you either lost your phone or left town. Please contact me at the station as soon as possible. It is of extreme urgency._"

Shawn still had no idea what this was all about, but the bad feeling was still there and refused to go away. The rest of the messages was either Gus, or Vick, one or two even of Juliet trying to reach him, telling him nothing else but to call either of them as soon as he got the message. What were they trying to do? Didn't they think that one message would be enough to make him call back, did they need to leave one every other hour?

Strangely enough, his Dad had stopped leaving messages by Tuesday, and now it was Thursday.

Maybe he had missed a big case the police needed his help on. Yes, that had to be it. The police were trying to reach him because they needed his help, and his father had simply given up because yelling at Shawn was no fun on an answering machine.

That had to be it. He was out of town for three days and everybody was going stir crazy.

Shawn erased all the messages on his answering machine and his voicemail and dialled Gus' cell number. The call was answered straight after the first ring.

"Burton Guster."

"Dude, it's…"

"Shawn, where in the world have you been? I've been trying to reach you for days!"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Gus, if it's about the bullet hole in your car, I told you to tell the insurance company that a woodpecker hit you at full speed and got stuck with its beak…"

"Shawn, this isn't about the bullet hole. Where are you?"

Shawn frowned. "My apartment. Why? Is this a guessing game? Where are you?"

"I'll be there in ten minutes. Don't go anywhere."

And before Shawn knew what was happening, Gus had hung up on him. Shawn stared at the phone in disbelief. Gus had really hung up on him. He put the phone down and finished his soda, then started unpacking his clothes from his backpack. He'd get to know what this was all about as soon as Gus arrived.

Which he did just as Shawn was tossing his dirty jeans into the clothes hamper. Shawn was surprised when he opened the door.

"Dude, did hell freeze over? Is Lassie singing and dancing and petting puppies on the street? You must have totally ignored the speed limit to get over here this fast, I never thought I'd see this day."

Gus brushed into the apartment without a word and pulled Shawn along. Once they reached the sofa he pushed Shawn down and settled on the lean of an armchair.

"Where in blazes have you been, Shawn?"

"Up in San Francisco, with Ricky. I needed to get away for a few days, and I had promised him to drop by for ages."

Gus drew a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face as he slowly exhaled.

"Shawn, we all tried to reach you. Did you forget your cell phone?"

Shawn shook his head. "No, I left it on purpose. I had no desire listening to my Dad rant at me about being irresponsible."

Gus nodded slowly. Shawn was getting confused. Gus was refusing to meet his eyes, and there was something tense in the way he was perched on the lean of the armchair.

"Gus, what is going on here?"

Gus closed his eyes and let out another long breath. "Something happened while you were gone."

"What? A case?"  
Gus shook his head. "No, not a case. It's something else."

"What?"

"It's your Dad."

That leaden feeling in Shawn's stomach suddenly increased a hundredfold, but he forced it down. "What's wrong? He get lockjaw from all the yelling and grinding his teeth?"

"Shawn, your father had an accident, on Tuesday morning when he was out fishing."

Shawn swallowed, but his mouth and throat were suddenly dry. "What happened? Is he in the hospital?"

Gus shook his head and ran his hands over his face again. When he looked up at Shawn again, there was a look in his eyes which sent shivers down Shawn's spine.

"No, he's not in the hospital. He's…he's dead, Shawn."


	3. Stage 1: Denial

**Chapter 2**** – Stage 1: Denial**

_"__Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." (Mark Twain)_

For a moment, the room was entirely silent. Shawn stared at his friend for a couple of heartbeats, then he shook his head.

"This isn't funny, Gus. Really not funny."

"I'm not trying to be, Shawn."

Shawn got up from the sofa and started pacing up and down. It all came crashing down on him in that one moment, and the sensation was gut-wrenching. How his father's calls had stopped by Tuesday morning, the fact that at the same time Gus and Chief Vick had started calling, leaving message after message. But it couldn't be. Come on, his father having an accident with his boat? His father dead? It just couldn't be. It had to be a misunderstanding.

"What happened?", Shawn croaked out, still pacing up and down.

Gus sighed and followed Shawn's movement with his eyes.

"Your Dad went out fishing early Tuesday morning. He was seen taking his boat out at half past four. Around nine, another fisher found his boat drifting a couple of miles off the coast. The boat was empty."

Shawn stopped his pacing and glared at his friend. "And because somebody found his empty boat you go around and tell me that he's…that he's dead? Are you raving mad, Gus?"

Gus sighed again and shook his head. "No. But he went out on the boat, and the next time the boat is seen he's nowhere to be found. The police found his blood on the planks. Not much, but definitely his. The most likely explanation is that he lost his balance and hit his head when he went overboard."

Shawn shook his head emphatically. "_One hand for the boat, the other hand for yourself_."

"What?"

"One of my Dad's rules about going out on a boat. No matter what you do, always make sure you have a good hold on the boat. He wouldn't just go overboard."

"But it seems that he did."

Shawn shook his head. "No, he didn't. Did they find him?"

Gus frowned. "What?"

"Did they find his _body_?"

"No. No, they didn't."

Shawn nodded, as if the matter was settled. "Then he isn't dead."

Gus drew a deep breath and got up from his perch on the armchair. He walked over to Shawn and tried to put his hands on Shawn's shoulders, but Shawn shrugged him off.

"Your Dad has been missing at sea for more than two days now, Shawn. Where is he? Why hasn't he gotten into contact?"

Shawn threw his hands into the air in frustration. "I don't know, all right? But there could be a logical explanation for all this. Maybe another boat took him aboard. Maybe he's in a hospital somewhere with amnesia."

Gus shook his head. "Chief Vick set everything into motion to find him, Shawn. The Coast Guard contacted all boats in the Santa Barbara area, and nobody reported taking aboard a person drifting in the ocean. She contacted all hospitals a hundred miles up and down the coast. No John Does fitting your Dad's description, and no patients with amnesia, either. Nothing. The Coast Guard had boats out searching for him, too, and they didn't find him."

"What do you mean, they _had_ boats out?"

Gus ran a hand over his head as he searched for a way to break this news to his friend. "The search was called off yesterday evening. According to them, finding him alive more than twenty-four hours after he went missing was unlikely."

"They called off the search?", Shawn asked incredulously. "They called it off, just like that?"

"Shawn, there are rules about this kind of thing. If somebody is drifting in the ocean, it's unlikely that they survive the first twenty-four hours. Hypothermia sets in, there's sharks out there, all kinds of things could happen. They did what they could, they calculated the currents and searched the areas where he'd most likely be. When they didn't find him, they called off the search. They can't search the whole Pacific Ocean."

"They don't need to search the whole damn ocean to find my Dad! He's not stupid, he knows what to do in case he gets into trouble at sea."

Gus drew a long, deep breath. "Yes, he did. But he also didn't wear his life-jacket, that was still in the boat. He wasn't picked up by a boat, and even if he managed to swim more than two miles to shore, he'd have either gotten into contact or he'd have ended up in a hospital somewhere."

"Gus, stop it. Stop trying to tell me that my father is dead!"  
"There isn't really another explanation right now, Shawn."  
Shawn spun around and angrily faced his friend. "Then we need to _find_ that explanation, Gus. We're good at finding things the authorities keep missing."

"Shawn, when Chief Vick wasn't able to reach you, she called me about it. I've been there these past days, I've seen what she has done to find your Dad. Everybody at the station was working overtime because he was one of theirs. There is nothing they kept missing."

Shawn shook his head. "There always is. Come on, we need to get down to the station."

Before Gus even had the chance to protest, Shawn had grabbed his jacket and was storming over towards the front door. Gus stared after him for a moment, then he followed his friend out the apartment and down to the street. If they already went to the station now, he would drive. At the very least, it would give him a chance to keep an eye out on Shawn for the rest of the day.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

They arrived at the police station twenty minutes later, and Shawn stormed up the stairs and into the station without even waiting until Gus had locked the car. Not bothering to greet the officers, or to stop for a chat like he normally did, Shawn stormed through the station as fast as he could, eyes trained firmly on Chief Vick's office door. He didn't even notice that instead of calling out greetings, everybody in the station was staring at him silently, watching what he was doing.

Not bothering to knock, Shawn opened Chief Vick's office door and went into the room. Vick was seated behind her desk, Lassiter was sitting on one of the chairs in front of her desk, and both interrupted their conversation and turned to look at Shawn as he entered.

Chief Vick had already drawn breath to say something as a response to whoever dared to barge into her office like that, but when she realised who it was that had come storming into her office she released the breath again and settled back into her chair.

"Mr. Spencer."

"What is going on here, Chief? I'm away for three days, and now I come back and Gus is telling me some bullshit story about my Dad gone missing at sea?"

Vick sighed and turned towards Lassiter. "Thank you detective. We'll continue this later."

Lassiter got up and left the office. In the doorway he nearly collided with Gus who had finally caught up with his friend.

"Sorry Chief", he panted.

"It's all right, Mr. Guster. Please close the door."

Gus did, and Vick turned back towards Shawn.

"I'd have liked to inform you about this whole situation sooner, but nobody knew where you were."

"Well, I'm back, so why don't you inform me now?"

Vick gestured for the chairs in front of her desk, but while Gus sat down, Shawn remained standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Vick sighed.

"I trust Mr. Guster already told you most of what has been going on during the past three days."

"Gus insists that my father is dead, even though all he was able to tell me was that his boat was found empty somewhere off shore. Maybe you could tell me why the Coast Guard has called off the search for him?"

"Because they conducted a search for nearly two days without any results. They wanted to call off the search on Tuesday at nightfall already, and I had to convince them to continue the search on Wednesday. And despite two days of intense search, there is no trace of your father. I have informed all hospitals, doctors, private clinics and morgues in a radius twice as large as I'd have done in any other case, but there is no trace of him anywhere."

"And what now?"

Vick looked at Shawn strangely. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is what you are going to do now? What is your next step in trying to find my father?"

Vick sighed. "Right now we've done all we can."

"All you can?", Shawn yelled. "All you can? If you had done all you can, you'd have found my Dad by now, don't you think?"

Vick looked as if she was about to reprimand Shawn sharply, but after a mere second the expression vanished from her face and she sighed again. "Mr. Spencer…Shawn. I want to find Henry as well, but the hard facts speak a pretty clear language. From what we know now, it's highly unlikely that we are going to find your father alive."  
"So that's it? You're just giving up? _Sorry Henry, old pal, but we've put two days of effort into searching for you, but now we'd rather go back to writing parking tickets_?"

"Shawn!", Gus hissed from his seat on the chair, but Vick waved him off.

"It's all right, Mr. Guster. Shawn, if there is anything you think we haven't done yet, feel fee to tell me about it. I want to find Henry as well."  
Shawn laughed mirthlessly. "Sure you want that. Which is why the Coast Guard has stopped searching. Which is why all you've been able to unearth in three days is his empty boat!"

"Then what do you suggest we do?"

Shawn started pacing again, up and down in front of Vick's desk. "Gus said you found blood in his boat. Has it ever crossed your mind that somebody took him? That he didn't fall out of his boat and hit his head, but that somebody hit him over the head with something?"  
"There is no evidence suggesting this. We've been in contact with all boats that were seen in the area that morning. Henry didn't report anybody threatening him. There's no lead suggesting that foul play was involved."

"What about his old cases? Somebody he arrested could be out on revenge."

Vick tiredly rubbed her temples. "Despite the fact that the whole situation suggests an accident, I've had officers look into Henry's old case files. Do you even know how many people your father arrested throughout his career? Officer McNabb has volunteered to go through the files in more detail, on his own time if necessary, and other officers have volunteered to help, but it's going to take more time. So far, the homicide cases your father handled have yielded no suspects. Nobody who was recently released from prison, nobody who swore revenge against Henry. It's another dead end, Shawn."

Shawn ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "Another dead end. Just as dead as you're suggesting my father is. Great job, Chief, really. I see you've covered all your bases. What now, you already prepared the papers to have my father declared dead? Do you need me to sign anywhere before you can go back to business as usual? Because I wouldn't want to stand in the way of that!"

"Shawn!"

"No Gus, I'm not going to stand here and listen to this crap!"

He stormed out of the room and slammed the door out on his way. Gus flinched, then turned back towards Chief Vick.

"I'm sorry about that. I think it was a bit much to take in for him."

Vick nodded. "No apologies necessary, Mr. Guster. I can imagine what is going on with him right now. It's not the first time I've had to deal with that kind of situation. Just watch out that he doesn't do anything stupid."

Gus nodded. "I will. Goodbye Chief."

"Goodbye Mr. Guster."

As Gus left the office, he immediately realised that Shawn's exit had drawn the attention of nearly everybody in the station. It was strangely silent, and as Gus left the office and headed towards the front door, he was aware of the numerous pairs of eyes following him and watching his every move.

He found Shawn angrily pacing up and down next to the car in the parking lot. His friend had his eyes fixed on the ground and was mumbling angrily, though Gus couldn't make out clearly what Shawn was talking about.  
"Shawn?"

"What?", Shawn snapped and stopped his pacing. When he looked up, there was a look of such pure and unadulterated anger on his face that Gus nearly flinched back. He had never seen that look on Shawn's face before, but he had seen Henry Spencer in various stages of anger and fury over the past decades. It was creepy how much Shawn looked like his father at this moment.

"Chief Vick is only doing her job. And we both know that she's good at what she does."

"If she was good, she'd have found out by now what really happened to my Dad", Shawn mumbled angrily.

Gus bit his lip and thought for a moment. "Listen, mate. I know it has to be hard right now. You haven't been around for three days, and when you come back the first thing you hear is that your father died while you were gone. Of course that it hard to take in. But if you think about it logically, if you consider the facts, you'll have to realise that the chances of your Dad being alive are practically nonexistent."

"I _am_ thinking logically, Gus. Believe me. Somehow, I get the feeling that I'm the only one who still is."

"If this is about your fight with your Dad…"

"And what would you know about that?", Shawn roared.

Gus forced his voice to remain calm. "I know about that because when your father didn't get a hold of you on the phone Monday evening, he called the office. He yelled at me because he thought I knew where you were and was covering up for you. It wasn't difficult to guess that the two of you had been fighting again. He wasn't my Dad, but even I have an extremely bad feeling because the last time I talked to him he was yelling at me. I know what your relationship with him was like, I know how he always managed to get under your skin. Parting in a fight is bad, Shawn, but I think you have to face the facts."

"I don't have to face anything", Shawn yelled, not caring in the least that people were turning to look at them. "And stop talking about him in the past tense! He's not dead. You get that, Gus? My Dad is not dead!"

Gus drew a breath to reply, but Shawn threw his hands into the air in frustration and started hurrying out of the parking lot. Gus leaned against his car and closed his eyes for a moment. This had so not gone well. Not that he had expected anything else. For the past three days he had tried to figure out how he'd break the news to Shawn. One scenario had been just as bad as the next, but no matter what, _this_ had definitely not worked out. Gus doubted that any other way of breaking the news to Shawn would have worked out more smoothly, but this was definitely only the start of a long downhill-ride.

Gus opened his eyes again and got into the car. Musing wouldn't get him any further at this point. Right now, he needed to catch up with Shawn before his friend decided to do anything stupid.


	4. Stage 2: Anger

**Chapter 3**** – Stage 2: Anger**

Shawn didn't even think about where he was going. His feet were moving on their own as he was walking down the street. He had no destination. He simply needed to get away. Away from the police station and all the people who were trying to convince him that his father was dead.

Because the mere thought was ludicrous.

Henry Spencer couldn't be dead. Not like that, going out on his boat and not coming back. The mere idea was simply ridiculous.

He was startled out of his thoughts when a little blue car slowed down next to him. Shawn didn't even need to look to know that it was Gus. He kept on walking, not looking to the left. Gus kept his pace with Shawn for a minute, ignoring the other cars honking and overtaking him. But still Shawn kept walking on without looking at his friend.

A moment later, the little blue Yaris accelerated, but all of Shawn's possible hopes that Gus had given up were in vain. Instead, Gus pulled into a parallel parking spot a few metres ahead. Just as Shawn approached the car, Gus leaned over and opened the passenger door.

Shawn contemplated simply walking by without paying any attention to his friend, but the moment he passed the open door, Gus called him.

"Shawn, please wait."

With a sigh, Shawn stopped, but kept his eyes trained firmly ahead. Gus was still leaning across the passenger seat.

"Shawn, please get into the car. Your bike is still at your apartment, at least let me drive you home."

Shawn closed his eyes, silently counted to five, then opened them again. Not that he needed to get his anger under control. He was angry, true enough, but not particularly at Gus. Or at Vick. Truth be told, he didn't know who he was angry at. At everybody and yet nobody in particular. But Gus was right in one thing – his bike was still at his apartment, and as he didn't particularly fancy taking a bus or a cab right now, getting into the car might be the easiest alternative.

He drew another deep breath, then turned towards the car and climbed into the passenger seat. Gus watched him attentively as he fastened his seatbelt. Shawn leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Gus didn't start the engine immediately, he seemingly was waiting for his friend to say something first. After a few moments, Shawn opened his eyes again.

"Can I ask you a favour?", he finally asked after a few long minutes.

"Sure", Gus replied immediately.

"I want to go to my Dad's place. If you don't want to come, just drop me off at my apartment and let me get my bike."

Gus frowned. "Why wouldn't I want to come along?"

"Because I'm going there to find out what really happened to my Dad. Which is where the favour comes in. If you want to think that he's dead, just go ahead and think that he's dead. I'm going to find him, no matter what you think about it. But I don't really need anybody constantly telling me that he's dead while I'm trying to find him."

Gus thought about that for a long moment, then finally he put his hands back on the steering wheel.

"I'll drive you to your Dad's house. And if you want, I'll keep my mouth shut about what I think. If there's any realistic chance that something else than what the police think happened to your Dad, I'm going to help you find out what it was. I don't see how that could be possible, but I trust you. But let's be clear about one thing: I won't allow you to become obsessed with a delusion."

Shawn nodded with a sigh. "All right."

"Good." Gus started the car and pulled back into traffic. The entire ten minute drive passed in silence. Gus kept his eyes on the road, and Shawn kept looking out the window as the familiar scenery passed by. As Gus pulled into his childhood house's street, Shawn felt something tighten in his chest. Soon the house was in sight, Henry's truck parked in front of it.

The sight of his father's car rendered an even more surreal air to the whole situation. For as long as Shawn could remember, his father's car in the driveway had meant that his Dad was home. It had been one of the few steadily reliable things in Shawn's life, and he refused to believe that something like this might change in the mere time span of three days.

Gus stopped the car in the driveway behind Henry's truck, and Shawn had to bite back the remark that his friend better park the car on the street, otherwise his Dad would give him a good dressing down for blocking the way. He drew a deep breath as he realised just how much he automatically assumed that once he stepped into his father's house, everything would be just like it had always been.

"Are you all right?", Gus asked when Shawn didn't make a move to get out of the car.

Shawn nodded. "Yes. Let's go."

They got out of the car and went up the front steps of Henry's house. Shawn pulled out his keys and unlocked the front door.

"The police have been in here", Gus said as they entered the hall. "Your father's keys were found in his bag in the boat. You weren't there, so Chief Vick asked me if I thought it was okay. I…well, they weren't snooping through his things. I made sure of that. They were just looking if anything was out of place, you know."

Shawn nodded and closed the door behind himself. Chief Vick seemed to have truly taken the investigation into every direction imaginable if she had thought to look for signs of foul play in his father's house. "It's okay, Gus. I take it they didn't find anything?"

Gus shook his head. "Nothing, no. So, what are you planning on doing now?"

Shawn drew a deep breath and looked around the house. He didn't know what he had expected, but this certainly hadn't been it. Everything looked just like it normally did. Just as if his father would come in through the door any minute now. He'd have expected at least something to look out of place, something he as Henry's son would see immediately, even if the police missed it. But there was nothing.

The remote control was lying on the coffee table, the pillows on the sofa were still slightly squashed from his father sitting there, watching TV. As Shawn went into the kitchen he found the kitchen table empty, the counters cleared and wiped down, and a single cup and breakfast plate sitting on the drying-rack next to the sink. Some of the bananas in the fruit bowl on the counter were getting brown, but that was all that was out of the ordinary.

Shawn looked around the kitchen for a long moment. This was where he had last seen his father. This was where they had yelled at each other for what had felt like hours, before Shawn finally stormed out of the room and left. He didn't need to focus very hard to imagine his father as he had last seen him, standing between the kitchen table and counter, face red and a finger pointed at Shawn as he yelled at him. Shawn shook his head as if to clear his thoughts.

"We need to find out what is out of the ordinary."

"All right, where do we start?"

Honestly, Shawn had no idea. Living room and kitchen looked just like they normally did, and a cursory search through the things on his father's desk also revealed nothing of interest. Some bills Henry had paid recently and hadn't filed away yet, his chequebook, perfectly balanced, his address book and the small calendar into which Henry noted his appointments. There were absolutely no entries for Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

Shawn pointed towards the computer. "Why don't you take a look at his computer? You know, check his internet history, see if there was anything out of the ordinary he occupied his time with over the past days. You're more savvy in those things than I am."

Gus looked less than enthusiastic about snooping around in Henry's private affairs, but he sat down and started booting up the computer.

"What if he had password protection?"

Shawn shrugged. "He might be a cop, but as far as passwords are concerned, he's always been horribly unimaginative." He pointed to the large fish that was mounted on the wall in the living room. "Try _marlin_. Or his badge number, 1293. One of those should do the trick."

While Gus waited for the computer to boot up, Shawn went up the stairs and into his father's bedroom. When Shawn had still been a child, the bedroom had always been the place where his parents kept stuff he wasn't supposed to see, like his birthday and Christmas presents. Shawn had always been notoriously curious, but there had been very strict rules about snooping around in his parents' bedroom. Rules Henry Spencer had enforced just as strictly.

So it was with quite a bit of hesitation that Shawn entered his father's bedroom now. Here, too, everything looked mockingly normal. The bed was made, and besides a pair of jeans on a chair in the corner, no clothes were left lying around. Shawn took a deep breath and stepped up to the bed. He didn't know what he was searching for, the only thing he knew was that he wasn't so sure whether snooping around in his father's nightstand was the right way to get what he wanted to know.

After a long moment of hesitation, Shawn sat down on the bed and opened his father's nightstand.

He didn't know what he had been worried about finding, but whatever it was, it wasn't there. The nightstand was particularly unrevealing, actually. And meticulously tidy, like everything else in his father's house. There was a crime novel in the drawer, with a piece of blank paper stuck between the pages to mark where his father had left off. An age-old fishing magazine lay underneath that. Else, Shawn only found Henry's pain medication for his back, some cough drops, his extra pair of reading glasses, some random coins and – much to Shawn's surprise – his father's wedding ring. Besides the alarm clock on top of the nightstand, there was nothing there.

Frowning, Shawn got up from the bed and without thinking much about it smoothed out the comforter where he had sat. Then he did a quick check of the wardrobe and the drawers, but if his father had been keeping anything besides clothes and shoes up here, he had hidden it well.

After a few more minutes, Shawn left his father's bedroom. Gus was just coming up the stairs as Shawn stepped back into the corridor.

"You got into the computer?"

Gus nodded. "Yeah. You were right, the badge number did the trick."

"Did you find anything?"

Gus shook his head. "No. In fact, I'm sure your father has the most boring browsing history since the invention of the internet. I didn't even know that there were so many sites about fishing."

"Just that?"

Gus shrugged. "Mostly. He checked the weather report some time on Monday, probably to see whether the weather would be good for fishing on Tuesday. Else he was on several news-sites and checked his e-mails, but that's been it."

Shawn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. This just wasn't right. This didn't feel right. There had to be something here, some kind of hint as to what had happened to his father. And he needed to find something, because if they left the house empty-handed, Gus would just continue to try and convince him that his father was dead because of a stupid fishing accident. And Shawn just couldn't accept that. There had to be another explanation, he only had to find it.

"The attic."

Gus raised both eyebrows. "The _attic_? The attic your Dad has been nagging you to clean out for ages? What do you want there?"

"My Dad kept his own case files and stored them up there. You know, his handwritten notes and everything, not copies of the stuff at the station. And if anybody threatened him, he surely kept notes of that, as well. If anybody is out for revenge, we'll find out who it is from those files."

Gus opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again before Shawn had to remind him about his promise. Shawn knew that his friend wasn't happy with him searching for another reason for his father's disappearance, but right now he didn't particularly care about what Gus thought. If Gus wanted to think his father was dead and Shawn was deluded, so be it. But Shawn wouldn't believe a word of this whole story about his father being dead until he had seen proof. So without saying another word, Shawn reached for the latch in the corridor ceiling and pulled down the stairs to the attic.

The attic was one big room, dusty and filled with boxes. It really needed to be cleaned out, but Shawn had absolutely no desire to go through boxes and boxes of old stuff. It would take ages to get some sort of order into his chaos.

But right now he wasn't interested in the boxes. He led Gus around the boxes to two metal filing cabinets that stood in one of the far off corners of the attic. As he knelt down next to the first one and pulled out the first drawer, Gus sat down beside him with a sigh.

"Two cabinets full of files? Shawn, that's probably more than McNabb is currently digging through."

Shawn shook his head. "It's only this one. He got the other one for me."

There was a bitterness in his tone, and Gus wisely chose to remain silent. It had been one of those small things Henry had done that had infuriated Shawn to no end. Without even waiting for Shawn to make up his mind, he had chosen Shawn's career and had already bought all the necessary equipment.

Shawn pushed those thoughts away forcefully. They weren't helping him right now.

"All right, if we stay up here for too long we're probably going to contract the plague or something. But I don't want to drag all the stuff downstairs, so I need to sort through all this first. Dad always keeps this stuff updated, so I can throw out every file where the perp has been released from prison longer than a year ago, the small misdemeanours and those who are dead. But I need to take all the homicide files, that should be the two bottom drawers." He started pulling out files, then turned to look at Gus.

"Listen, I understand it if you want to leave. I'm going to be at this for a while, and I don't need you to wait around just to give me a ride. I can take the truck if I need to get home."

Gus watched his friend attentively and with some concern. "When was the last time you ate?"

Shawn shrugged. "Breakfast, I think."

"Then I'm going to get something to eat while you sort through this stuff. Any preferences?"

Shawn shook his head, already engrossed in the files. He barely even heard it when Gus left the attic.

Sorting through his father's files was easier than he had imagined. Henry had meticulously labelled each folder, and if the perpetrator had died, Henry had also remarked that on the file. Soon Shawn had formed two piles – those files he'd go through immediately, on top of which lay a folder containing threatening letters, and those files which he'd go through if he ran out of leads from the other files. If he didn't get too tired, he'd be able to go through most of this stuff during the night. By tomorrow morning he'd probably know more than the police after two days of investigation.

As he got up, his eyes fell onto the second filing cabinet again. The one his Dad had bought in the hope that one day his son would file his on personal case notes in there. Another disappointment, another point in an extremely long list.

Just to give it a try, Shawn pulled out the top drawer.

For a moment he just stood there and stared. Why were there files in the cabinet if he had never even gone to the Academy? Maybe his father had needed the space? But no, the bottom drawer of the other cabinet had been nearly empty.

His curiosity peaked, Shawn pulled out the first file and opened it up. A newspaper cut-out was all the file contained, and it was a cut-out Shawn immediately recognised. He had seen it before in his Dad's truck. Right after he had solved his first case. "_Psychic Cracks Mystery_" was the headline above a picture of himself at the McCallum residence.

Shawn hadn't thought that his father had continued collecting newspaper articles about his "psychic dog and pony show", as he had called it. But obviously he had. Each of Shawn's cases that had made the news was there, each case in a separate folder, all articles cut out meticulously. There was nothing else in the files, just the newspaper clippings, the sole addition was that Henry had written the dates in the margins of the clippings.

Shawn pulled out file after file. Each of his cases was there, all the cases he had worked for the SBPD, filed chronologically. His Dad had filed it all away. On the outside, his father had never once lost a single good word about the crimes Shawn had solved, and here at home he had collected all the newspaper clippings.

One didn't collect newspaper clippings of a thing one wasn't proud of. Or at least approved of. His Dad had collected all those articles, had followed every step in Shawn's fake psychic career, even in those cases where Shawn hadn't asked for his father's help. And he had done so silently, without ever losing a word about it.

No, he had only ever lost words about the things he hadn't liked. About the things he had wanted to criticise. One and a half years, and not once had just a single positive word left Henry's lips. And at night, once he had finished yelling at Shawn for pretending to be a psychic, Henry had cut out the newspaper articles about his son.

What kind of a fucked up logic was that?

Couldn't he just have spared himself his secret archiving and just come out and told Shawn that he was proud? Just once? He wouldn't have even needed to say it in those exact words, but something along the lines of "you're not a complete failure" would have been nice. That wasn't too much to ask for, was it?

Shawn stared at the cardboard folders in his hands until his vision started to blur. With a yell of pure rage, he threw the stack of folders against the wall, sending cardboard files and newspaper clippings flying through the dusty attic air.

"Was it so hard to say it, Dad? Just once?"

He started kicking at the cardboard boxes that were stacked beside him. When the stack didn't bulge, he took the top one and threw it against the floorboards. The sound of china breaking inside the box was satisfying.

"But no, you just couldn't do that!", he yelled at the empty attic. "Not you. You rather went out on your damn boat and drowned yourself than ever saying anything positive to me!"

Shawn grabbed box after box from the huge stacks. He tore open the flaps, tossed the contents everywhere around the attic, and whatever was breakable ended either against the wall or on the floor. Right now Shawn didn't care whether it was trash or precious memories, if it was breakable, he wanted to break it.

Shawn didn't notice that he was panting, that sweat was soaking his shirt and hair or that tears were streaming down his face. And he didn't care. All he cared about was break something, all he wanted was to shout and scream his anger into the empty room because even though nobody heard it, he could no longer hold it all in.

His father had found the ultimate way to have the last word. The ultimate way to get under his son's skin. And there was nothing Shawn could do about that now. Nothing but rage, and even that rage he could no longer direct at the person it was supposed to be directed at. Because his father wasn't here, and deep down inside Shawn knew that he was just denying the truth that his father was really and truly dead. But right now, that thought was still deep down inside and not on the surface, now he could still choose to ignore it.

Right now, all he felt was red and irate rage.

"Is that what you wanted?", he shouted at the dusty beams supporting the roof. "Is that your way of getting the better of me? I won't let you do that, all right? Do you understand me? I won't!"

He tore open the flap of the next cardboard box, letting his anger take control again. As long as his anger reigned, he didn't have to think, he didn't have to decide what to believe, he didn't have to feel, all he had to do was break things.

And he did.

It was as if a little switch inside of him had shut down conscious thought. Sensory overload, system failure, please reboot and try again. He was aware that he was moving, aware that age-old wedding presents, china and glasses passed through his hands, but it was as if he was merely a bystander incapable of doing anything to stop his path of destruction.

The next thing Shawn became consciously aware of was that suddenly his movements were impaired. His brain was giving the order to move his arms, but his arms weren't complying. And only when he heard a voice yelling at him, not for the first time judged by the tone of it, did he become aware of his blood pounding loudly in his ears, drowning out nearly all other sound.

Slowly, very slowly, Shawn realised that somebody was holding both his arms by the wrists, somebody who was standing right in front of him, talking without making a sound, talking to him, face a mask of worry.

Shawn drew a deep breath and focussed. It was hard, but after a few seconds he started seeing clearly again and the roaring of blood in his ears started to ebb away.

"Damn it Shawn, snap out of it!", he heard Gus yell, and he felt the jostling as Gus tried to shake him.

Panting, Shawn focussed his eyes on his friend. "Gus", he croaked hoarsely.

Gus breathed a sigh of relief. "Shawn, are you completely out of your mind?"

Slowly, Shawn looked around the attic. Or what had previously been the attic. Because now it was one large mess of shards, papers and broken things of indefinable nature. He tried to shrug, which was difficult with Gus still holding onto his wrists. "I'll clean it up again. That's what Dad wanted me to do, anyway, right? So at least I'll get to do it right."

"I'm not talking about the attic, Shawn."

A tug at his hands made Shawn look down. With a distanced fascination he noticed that he was bleeding from a few cuts on his hands. He didn't even remember cutting himself.

"That's all right."

"No, it isn't", Gus said firmly. "Come on, let's get you downstairs. I'll clean those, and I think I still have some antiseptic ointment and bandages in the car."

Numbly, Shawn allowed Gus to lead him down the steep attic stairs, down the corridor, the stairs and into the kitchen. Gus pushed him down into a chair.

"I'll be back in a moment."

Shawn nodded and waited patiently until Gus returned a few minutes later with his sample case. It was nearly an out of body experience how Shawn watched Gus clean and dress the cuts on his hands. They weren't overly bad, his right hand was only slightly scratched, but there was one cut on the back of his left hand that was pretty deep. Shawn merely sat and watched until Gus finished tying the last bandage.

"Thanks", he said, a little self-consciously as he cradled his bandaged left hand against his stomach.

"Are you all right?", Gus asked carefully.

Shawn shrugged. "A bit hard to say right now."

Gus nodded, accepting that as an answer without prying any further. "I brought pizza", he said and pointed at the large box on the counter. "You need to eat something."

Shawn nodded numbly as Gus got up and started pulling out plates and napkins. Shawn wasn't particularly hungry, but he knew that Gus would only start fretting even worse if he didn't eat anything right now. So he took a few listless bites from one of the pizza slices under his friend's watchful eye, but he couldn't bring down any more than that, no matter how concernedly Gus watched him.

While Gus was still eating, Shawn got up from his chair.

"Where are you going?"  
"I left the files in the attic. I'm just going to get them."

Gus' face immediately became worried again. "Do you think that's a good idea, Shawn?"

Shawn drew a deep breath. "Yes. I need to do this, Gus. I need to find out what happened to my father."

"Why do you find it so hard to believe that the most simple explanation could be the right one?"

Gus had carefully kept his voice neutral, but still he could visibly see the anger return to his friend's face. Shawn pointed a finger at him. "The moment his body drifts ashore I'll believe that. But in the meantime, if you don't mind, I'm still going to try and find another explanation. I know that it's not as easy as sitting around and waiting for his body to show up, but at least it's something to do."

Shawn vanished up the stairs and Gus leaned back in his chair with a loud sigh. He knew that once his friend had set his mind to something, it was an impossible feat to make him change it again. This was going to become a long night.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

A successful friendship with Shawn Spencer was based on a simple principle: All's fun and games, and there's only a few rules you have to stick to.

One of those rules, the most important one probably, was not to approach Shawn when he was in a certain mood. It was a rule that could easily be forgotten, because those moods hardly ever showed, and Shawn was pretty easy to get along with most of the times. Somewhat exhausting, yes, but easy to get along with nevertheless.

But two and a half decades of friendship had gained Gus a closer insight into the inner workings of Shawn Spencer. Gus knew that Shawn had a temper. He hardly ever let it show, but it was there. Genetic inheritance from his father, Shawn claimed. Aside from a few occasions when they had been much younger, Gus had never been able to raise that temper against himself. It took a lot of provocation to make Shawn snap.

Ironically, Henry had always known which buttons to push in order to make Shawn's temper flare up from one moment to the next. It had been the start of many of their fights, and one of the reasons why Shawn hated getting into discussions with his father. Shawn was always aware that his father knew to play him like a violin, and the fact that in thirty years he hadn't found a way to deal with his father doing that was driving him mad.

But tonight was the first time in over a decade that Gus saw Shawn in an extremely sour mood without Henry being present.

Wordlessly, Shawn had carried three huge stacks of his father's files from the attic into the living room where he had dropped them next to the couch. Either he ignored Gus, or he wasn't even aware of his friend's presence anymore as he searched his father's desk for pen and paper and then got a pot of strong coffee going.

When Shawn had settled on the sofa and had started perusing the first files, Gus had made the mistake of approaching him.

"Anything I can help you with?"

The glare Shawn had levelled at Gus had been icy. "What do you want to do, Gus? You already think that my father is dead, don't you? So what are you hoping to find, the big red arrow that says _He's dead, give it up Shawn_, just so that you can point it out to me?"

Shawn hadn't even bothered to wait for an answer before he had continued to study the files in front of him. It had been a rough and unfriendly dismissal, but Gus knew not to take it too seriously. Shawn had mastered the art never to let on how much he was hurting. He could hide things very well beneath his ever-so-cocky façade, but Gus knew that right now Shawn was hurting horribly. He might not want to admit it yet, but Gus knew that Shawn had been hurting ever since he had first gotten the news about his father's disappearance.

Which is why he didn't respond anything to Shawn's acid accusation. Instead, he silently withdrew into the kitchen and left Shawn to do what he did best – find things everybody else overlooked. Not that Gus thought there was anything unclear about this case. He wished there was, he didn't want Henry Spencer to be dead, either, but honestly there was no indicator that foul-play was involved. None at all.

But searching through those files kept Shawn occupied, and Gus only needed to take care that he was around once all of Shawn's "leads" ran out and he fell into a dark hole.

To keep himself busy he ate another piece of pizza, tidied up the kitchen, then he fetched his laptop from the car and booted it up. He could as well try to distract himself with that presentation he still had to finish.

It was one and a half hour later when a knock on the front door interrupted Gus in his work. Not knowing whether Shawn wasn't too engrossed in his perusal of the files to miss the knock on the door, Gus got up and went over towards the door. Just as he was about to open it, Shawn stepped up to him.

"It's all right, I'll take this."

Gus nodded and took a step back as Shawn opened the door. Gus had never seen the man on the doorstep before, but after a short moment of silent contemplation Shawn seemed to recognise him.

"Frank, hello."

"Hey Shawn. I was just driving by on my way home and saw that the lights were on. I figured it was you, so I decided to drop by and see how you were doing."

Shawn opened the door wider and gestured for the man to come into the kitchen. "Come in, Frank."

"Just for a moment, I don't want to disturb you and I really need to get home."

His eyes fell on Gus and he stretched out his hand. Shawn jumped in with the introductions. "Frank, this is my friend Gus. Gus, this is Frank Johansen. My Dad's old partner at the department."

"Nice to meet you, sir."

Frank smiled at Gus with a nod, then turned back towards Shawn. "I only wanted to see how you were holding up."

Shawn shrugged, and Gus could literally see how he was trying to avoid talking about the fact that he didn't believe his father to be dead. "I'm all right, thanks."

Frank nodded, clearly uncomfortable with the situation as well. "I met some of the other guys from our poker game this morning. We all can't really believe it yet."

Shawn nodded noncommittally as Frank continued. "Anyway, if there's anything you need, anything we can do, just give word."

Shawn forced himself to smile. "Thanks Frank. I appreciate it."

Frank nodded and turned back to the door. "Henry was one of ours, Shawn. We watch out for our own. Call if you need anything. Goodbye Shawn. Gus."

"Goodbye Frank. Thanks for dropping by."

Shawn closed the door behind Frank and sighed deeply. "If they watched out for their own as well as he says they do, then my Dad wouldn't be missing without anybody knowing where he is", he mumbled.

"Shawn", Gus said sharply.

Shawn turned around and glared at his friend, but Gus didn't mind. "Stop it", he added.

"Stop what?", Shawn asked, his voice sharp.

"Stop placing the blame for what happened on everybody you come across. It's not his fault that your father went fishing!"

"Maybe not, but he can't just come here and declare self-righteously that cops watch out for their own! Cops say that all the time, and it's always after one of theirs died. Fact is that nobody was there when my Dad needed them!"

"Neither were you!"

The words were out before Gus really thought about it, but he didn't regret them. Not really. Not even when he saw how Shawn's face contorted into a mask of barely concealed anger.

"What was that?", he hissed and took a step closer to Gus. Gus didn't back down.  
"That's what this is all about, isn't it Shawn? It's that _you_ weren't there. You ran off because you had a fight with your Dad, and you weren't there when he died. That's what this whole thing is about, the yelling at Chief Vick, the yelling at me, the obsession with your father's age-old files, the constant line of "he's not dead". You refuse to believe the obvious because somewhere deep down you're afraid that in some weird way, your father going out fishing that day had something to do with you. You're afraid to believe that he's dead because you blame yourself for it. You blame yourself for running away from yet another fight. Not that it would have changed a friggin thing if you had not gone to San Francisco, but I know you well enough to know that you blame yourself, Shawn. Stop it. It won't help you."

"How…how dare you…"

"I dare because I'm your friend, Shawn. I dare because I know you, and I know how this will end up if I let you do this. I said I wouldn't do that. I said I wouldn't let you become obsessed with a delusion. There you are, Shawn, I'm bursting your bubble right now. It's nobody's fault that your father went out fishing last Tuesday. Nobody's but his own. It's nobody's fault that he went overboard, or that he hit his head and probably drowned. But that's what happened, denying it won't make it untrue. Searching for clues in year-old files won't make it untrue! There is no other explanation, Shawn. None that makes sense. So stop doing this to yourself."  
For one endlessly long moment Gus thought that this time he had done it and had provoked Shawn's temper to the point where he snapped. But even though Shawn stood a mere foot in front of him, all muscles tense as bowstrings and murder in his eyes, he didn't strike him. After that one endlessly long moment Shawn broke eye contact and seemed to deflate visibly. He drew breath as if to say something, then shook his head and wordlessly went back into the living room.

It felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room, and after a moment Gus sank back down into his previously vacated kitchen chair. He had needed to get this out, he couldn't just sit by and watch how Shawn was running himself to mental and physical exhaustion with what he was doing. But the look in Shawn's eyes had scared him, and that said something. He wanted to help his friend through this, even if that meant he had to speak out some unpleasant truths at times, but he didn't want to permanently ruin their friendship with it.

Shawn had probably gone back to perusing his files. He had always had an aptitude for repressing unpleasant things. And no matter how senseless Gus thought it was, if Shawn stayed here for tonight, he would, too. But first he had a presentation to finish, so he booted up his laptop.

When Shawn came into the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee at half past eleven, Gus was convinced that his friend didn't plan on getting any sleep tonight. But Gus was getting tired, so half an hour later, he finished working on his presentation and closed the laptop. He'd just bunk in Shawn's old bedroom for the night, he was sure that Shawn wouldn't need it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Shawn didn't sleep that night, he worked. Gus' words earlier that evening had been painful for him, far more than he would ever admit, but he forcefully pushed all thoughts about that away. He'd start analysing his behaviour once he had figured out what had really happened while he had been away.

Shawn had cursed his father for the training he had undergone during his youth many times, but he had to admit that a photographic memory came in handy when working through a foot-thick stack of old case-files. Those provided far less information or clues than Shawn would have liked, even the folder containing the threat-letters to Henry. Most of them were over ten years old, and there wasn't a single one of them which Shawn could assign to a specific case. And none of them sounded as if it came from somebody who was willing to go through with his threat.

By the end of the night, Shawn had compiled a small list of names which he thought demanded further looking into. Perps his father had arrested who had been released within the last eighteen months, mostly. None of them had openly threatened his father, but Henry had taught Shawn to be thorough.

Shawn was acutely aware that Gus hadn't left, but he didn't quite know what to think about that. But when he went into the attic once more at two in the night to get the remaining files, he took care to be as silent as possible so that he wouldn't wake Gus.

But his first intuition when he had started sorting the files in the attic seemed to have been right. Shawn didn't find anything else of interest in that one, smaller stack of files, and at half past four in the morning he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.

He was woken rather abruptly by somebody knocking on the front door. Shawn was confused for a moment why he didn't wake up to find himself in his own bed, but the memory of what had happened the previous day didn't wait long until it returned. Abruptly, Shawn tried to sit up on the sofa, a movement against which his back protested violently.

Whoever was in front of the door knocked again.  
"I'm coming, I'm coming", Shawn grumbled and slowly picked his way through the haphazardly strewn files on the floor over towards the kitchen. Just as he entered, Gus came down the stairs, buttoning up his shirt. He must have been downstairs before, though, because the kitchen already smelled of coffee.

Shawn reached the door just as another knock, more loudly and far more insistent, echoed through the kitchen.

"All right, all right, I'm coming", Shawn grumbled and pulled the door open…

…to come face to face with Lassiter and Juliet.

"Lassie! Jules! Come on in, Gus made coffee!"

Shawn didn't know why he put up the cheery and friendly face at that moment. Probably, he didn't want to face yet another condolence visit. But Juliet didn't answer Shawn's smile. Slightly confused, Shawn turned towards Lassiter.

"Lassie come on, what's going on here?"

Lassiter took off his sunglasses and drew a deep breath. He looked up at Shawn without saying anything, but the mere look in his eyes was enough to make Shawn's knees buckle.


	5. Stage 3: Bargaining

**Chapter 4 – Stage 3: Bargaining**

For the fragment of a moment Shawn swayed on his feet, but even before Lassiter could reach out to steady him, or before Gus could make a step closer to his friend, Shawn had caught himself again and met Lassiter's gaze.

"What happened?", he asked, and he had himself back under such a tight control that even Gus, who knew Shawn better than most other people, had to struggle to detect the slight tremor in his voice.

"Can we come in?", Juliet asked and Shawn wordlessly gestured for them to do so. They sat down at the kitchen table while Gus started pouring out coffee. Shawn didn't care for coffee right now. He wanted to know why the two detectives were here, and his gut told him that it wasn't for a good reason.

"What happened?", he repeated impatiently when Gus had finished playing barista.

At first it looked as if Juliet wanted to answer, but Lassiter beat her to it.

"A body was washed ashore this morning, forty miles down the coast."

It was as if everything stopped. Just for a second, but everything stopped, the ticking of the clocks, the sounds of the waves breaking down at the beach, the beating of Shawn's heart, the movement of the Earth. It lasted only the fragment of a moment, then it started again – all wrong and out of synch.

Shawn swallowed hard, then he slowly nodded. "Okay. I…do you need me to identify him?"

Lassiter shook his head. "I'm afraid it's more complicated than that, Shawn."

Under any other circumstances, Shawn would have remarked on the detective's use of his first name. Right now, he didn't even notice.

"What does that mean?"

"We were notified by the local authorities down in Ventura this morning because of the BOLO for any unidentified bodies from the ocean. The body washed ashore there was in the water for too long to make identification easy. Male Caucasian, that's about all that's sure for now."

"I'm his son, I'll be able to say if it's him or not."

Lassiter shook his head. "The Chief drove down there as soon as the call came in early this morning. She knows Henry, and she couldn't make an identification."

Shawn drew a deep breath. "So why are you here now?"

"We need your father's dental records, and something for a DNA comparison. The coroner wasn't sure whether identification by dental schematics will even be possible."

Shawn nodded and got up from his chair. Wordlessly, he went over to his father's desk and started rummaging around until he had found his father's address book. He handed it over to Lassiter.

"Here, his dentist's address is in the back, it's Dr. Dwyer", he said in a flat voice. "I'm going to get his toothbrush."

As Shawn trudged out of the kitchen and up the stairs, both Lassiter and Juliet turned towards Gus.

"How is he holding up?", Juliet asked.

Gus sighed. "Not at all. Not really."

"He seems so…detached", Juliet said with worry in her eyes.

"Did Chief Vick tell you about his visit to her office yesterday?"

Both detectives nodded in confirmation.

"That's the main thing. He doesn't believe his father is dead, so he spent the whole night perusing his Dad's old files in search of a possible suspect. To be honest, I don't know what will be now, after what you've just told him. Or what will be should that body turn out to be his father. To be honest, I don't even want to think about it."

"Anything we can do?"

"Short of finding his father alive I don't think there's anything you can do right now Juliet. I'll let you know."

Lassiter finished writing down the dentist's address and put his own notebook back into his pocket. At that moment, Shawn came back down the stairs, his father's toothbrush in his hand. Lassiter quickly fished an evidence bag out of his pocket and opened it so that Shawn could drop the toothbrush into it.

"We'll let you know as soon as there is news", he said as he pocketed the bag.

Shawn nodded. "Sure. Thanks."

For a moment it seemed as if Lassiter wanted to say something else, but then he seemed to think better of it and turned towards Juliet. "We need to get going, O'Hara."

Juliet nodded and got up from her chair. While Lassiter went directly over towards the door, she hesitated for a moment, then stepped over towards Shawn and hugged him tightly. Shawn just stood there and allowed the embrace to happen, but he didn't hug back. After a few seconds, Juliet let go and took a step back.

"Call if you need anything", she said, not quite meeting Shawn's eyes. Shawn nodded and brought the two detectives to the door. Once Juliet and Lassiter were gone, he leaned against the closed door and ran his hands through his already sleep-mussed hair. Gus stood beside the kitchen table and watched his friend helplessly. It was obvious that he was on the verge of saying something, something meaningless that was mean to be comforting, and Shawn was eternally grateful that his friend swallowed it down and didn't say it out loud.

"What now?", Gus asked carefully.

Shawn sighed and looked around the room, as if the answer to all his questions was lurking in a corner and he only needed to spot it.

"Now I'm going to take a shower."

And without another explanation, he vanished up the stairs and into the bathroom.

Half an hour later, Shawn and Gus were on their way back to the Psych office. Shawn knew that his friend was seriously starting to doubt his mental stability, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He had compiled a list of eight names from his father's old files, and he intended to figure out if either of them could have anything to do with his father's disappearance.

The internet connection at Henry's house was awfully slow, that's why he wanted to go to the office to check out the names he had found. He would have taken the truck and gone to the office himself, but one warning look from Gus had put an end to that plan. His main argument had been something about not letting Shawn drive after ten cups of coffee and only three hours of sleep, and that had been it. Well, he could always go and fetch his bike from his apartment later on, then he wouldn't need to rely on Gus driving him around anymore.

As soon as they arrived at the office, Shawn got another pot of coffee going and booted up his computer. Eight names sounded like much, but inwardly Shawn wasn't that optimistic. Six of the men had been released over a year ago, and five of them were well over sixty years old. Which didn't say they might not be able to kidnap his father, but Henry was admittedly still quite fit for his age. It would take quite a bit of physical strength to bring him down.

But Shawn needed to find something, because as of this morning, the stakes had become much higher.

Last night it had been a mere research into his father's old cases, but today it felt like a race against time. While he was sitting here, Juliet and Lassiter were getting his father's dental records and were trying to match those to the body that had drifted ashore. Shawn needed to find a suspect, a really good suspect, before the results of those comparisons arrived. If he only found somebody with a good reason to harm his father, then the body down in Ventura wouldn't be him. Couldn't be him.

It was a crude logic, it was a fault logic, but it was all Shawn could wrap his mind around. If somebody was out there with a grudge against Henry, it meant that the body that had drifted ashore couldn't be him. Because the person with the grudge against his Dad had him, and not the sea. So Shawn only needed to find that person and everything would be all right. He only needed to find the suspect before the body was identified, then everything would be all right.

He was bargaining with the universe on this one, he knew that. It was like raising the stakes in a poker game, all in, while he only held one card and his opponent was wearing a smug grin on his face. But he was desperate enough to make that bargain. If he only found a suspect, somebody with a motive, his father wouldn't be dead.

"Shawn?", Gus interrupted his musings, just as he was about to start up his internet browser. He looked up.

"Yes?"

Gus was leaning against his desk, arms crossed in front of his chest, looking uncomfortable. "I…there's a couple of things I need to do. I need to drop by the office and get a few things done. Hand in my presentation, for one. I'll be back in two hours, if you're okay with that."

Shawn frowned. "Sure. I'm a grown boy, Gus. I think I can keep myself occupied for two hours. Even more, if you have something else to do."

"I'm not saying that. It's just that, well, with everything that happened…"

"I'll be fine, Gus. Thanks for your concern, but it's really not necessary."

"All right. It won't take any longer than two hours. Just wait here, then I'll give you a ride later on."

Shawn nodded, impatient to start his research. "Sure, I'll wait. Just go and do your job, I'll be here."

Gus nodded, though his expression said that he still wasn't entirely convinced that it was a good idea to leave Shawn alone. But he grabbed his jacket nevertheless and left the office.

Shawn opened his internet browser window and pulled out the list he had compiled the previous night. Eight names, now he only needed to find out what had happened to them after they had been released from prison.

An hour later, Shawn's frustration was mounting. He knew he was clutching at straws, but he hadn't thought that the straws would be just that brittle. The names on his list had been easy enough to track down, but the results weren't what Shawn had suspected them to be.

Eight names.

Two were dead.

Three had moved away. Far away enough to not even be considered possible suspects. New Jersey, Chicago, Vancouver.

One had suffered a stroke and had been a patient in a local nursing home for the past four months.

One was back in prison after violating the conditions of his parole.

Which left Shawn with one name. One man who could possibly hold a grudge against his father. One man with a motive for revenge. One man who was all that was standing between Shawn and the realisation that his father had to be dead.

Patrick Winston.

He had to be the guy. He had to be the one who had taken his father because if he wasn't, then Shawn was out of suspects, had run out of leads and ideas, and then the body in Ventura would turn out to be his father. And Shawn couldn't let that happen.

Because he had done everything he could. He had used the skills his father had taught him to search through over a hundred files in one night. He had looked at it all, had searched for the tiniest detail, and had come up with that one name. It had to be him. If there was some sort of universal balance, then this had to be the man. It had to be him, and once Shawn found him, his father would turn up again, alive and well. It was as easy as that. There was just no way that Patrick Winston couldn't be responsible for his father's disappearance, because that would mean that his father was dead. And he couldn't be dead, not after Shawn had done all he could to find another possibility.

Shawn looked up Patrick Winston's current address in an online phonebook, then he grabbed his jacket. He was just about to leave the office when he realised that he didn't have his bike. That was still at his apartment. Just because Gus had had to insist that he wasn't fit to drive. Damn. Now he had to call a cab to get to his apartment and fetch his bike. Gus would freak if Shawn wasn't here when he came back, but there was nothing Shawn could do about that now. He couldn't waste anymore time, he couldn't risk that body in Ventura being identified before he had a chance to go and check out this one single lead he had.

As he put his jacket back down and reached for his phone to call a cab, there was a knock on the office door. Shawn put the phone back down impatiently and raised his head to see who was disturbing him now. A moment later a man came into the office and stopped in the doorway, lightly rapping his knuckles against the frame.

"Can I help you?", Shawn asked him, struggling hard to keep the impatience out of his voice.

"Shawn Spencer?"

Shawn nodded. "Yes, that's me. What can I do for you?"

The man stepped closer. There was something familiar about him, but Shawn just couldn't put his finger on it. He was older than his father was but still fit, a bit taller than Henry was, with short grey hair in which only a couple of black strands were still showing. He looked vaguely familiar, but Shawn couldn't tell where he had seen him before.

"I'm Larry Norton", the man said.

Contrary to the face, the name meant absolutely nothing to Shawn. When Shawn didn't answer or showed any sign of recognition, the man chuckled lowly. "Figures that my name doesn't tell you much. I knew your father."  
There it was again. The past tense everybody saw the need to apply when talking about his Dad. Shawn hated it when people did that. But if any of that showed on Shawn's face, Larry Norton didn't seem to notice.

"We went to school together, back in the day. Ages ago. I moved east when I went to college, and we lost contact. I've only been back in Santa Barbara for six months now, I came back after I retired. Maybe eight weeks ago I met Henry at the home depot. We went out for a beer two, maybe three times." He rubbed the stubble on his face and sighed. "You probably don't even want to hear all this, sorry. It's just…I heard what happened to Henry. I didn't want to intrude, but I was driving by and remembered that Henry and I once got talking about your agency. I just wanted to drop by and offer my condolences." He drew a deep breath. "I know it's not much, and I know that right now you probably don't really care whether or not I'm sorry for what happened to Henry. I just wanted to have said it. And to let you know that if there's anything I can do, just tell me."

Another condolence visit. Shawn asked himself whether he'd have to get used to those now. Because if there were more of those to come, going back to San Francisco was an option worth considering. Nevertheless, he forced himself to smile at Larry.

"Thank you, Mr. Norton."

"Please, it's Larry."

Shawn nodded. "Thank you, Larry. I appreciate it."

"All right, I don't want to keep you for any longer. Goodbye, Shawn."

"Goodbye."

Larry left the office again, but once more Shawn was stopped from calling a cab, this time by Gus' arrival.

"Who was that?", he asked without any subtlety as he hurried over towards his desk.

"An old high school friend of my father's. Another condolence visit. At least this time I didn't get any lines about how they normally watched out for each other." He shook his head as if to chase away those thoughts. "Anyway, you're back early."

Gus shrugged. "Not much to do at the office except for handing in my presentation."

It was a white lie, and an obvious one at that, but Shawn refused to comment on it. Instead he grabbed his jacket again and turned towards the door.

"Whatever, it's good that you're here. I need a ride."

Gus frowned, but he followed his friend out the office. Once they were in the car and he had started the engine, he turned back towards Shawn.

"Where to?"

"Stark Street."

Gus nodded and moved the car into the flow of traffic. They rode in silence for a while, but after a few minutes Gus couldn't contain his curiosity for any longer.

"What are we doing in Stark Street?"

"We're going to visit a man named Patrick Winston."

Gus raised an eyebrow. "And why?"

Shawn sighed. "He's the one guy from my Dad's files who stood out."

"Shawn, don't you think that you're barking up the wrong tree here?"

"No. I think I need to check him out, period."

"Shawn…"

"Listen Gus, if you don't want to drive me there, just drop me off at my apartment and I'll go alone. But I will talk to him. I need to talk to him."

Gus took one hand off the steering wheel and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "What is his story?"

"He robbed a bank, together with a buddy, twelve years ago. The situation got out of hand, one of the guards wanted to draw his weapon and Winston hit him over the head with his pistol. The guard died later in the hospital. Winston's partner shot another guard in cold blood. He and his partner got away with the money before the police stormed the bank, but my Dad caught Winston before he could reach their escape vehicle. The partner escaped. Winston was later charged with manslaughter, but cut a deal with the DA and got off with 15 years because he gave up his partner. He was released on parole six months ago."

Gus nodded as he took the information in. "He ever threaten your Dad?"

"He resisted arrest, it must have been quite some brawl before my Dad had him subdued. He never overtly threatened him, though I couldn't tie the threat letters I found in my Dad's files to any specific case. So it might be possible. Besides, his file said that before his arrest, he was an avid member of a local sailing club. I did a little research. Guess what one of the first things he did after his release from prison was? He joined his club again. His job at a car repair shop is just about getting him by, he's living in a cheap one-bedroom apartment, but still he had fifty dollars a month to be a member of a sailing club? What if he only did it because that way he had access to a boat, to attack and take my father somewhere where there'd be no witnesses."

"Shawn, sometimes people cut corners to have enough money for something they enjoy. The guy has been in prison for twelve years, if he truly loves sailing that much, I can understand that this is something he would do. It could be totally innocent."

Shawn bit his lower lip and shook his head. "He had a motive, and he had the means. I need to check him out, it's the only lead I have, and if I don't manage to find…", he interrupted himself and drew a deep breath. This wasn't the time to think about his bargain with the universe. "If this doesn't work out, there's nothing else I can do. I have to talk to the man."

"Just talk, we are clear on that, right?"

"Sure, just to talk."

They drove the rest of the distance in silence, until they finally pulled into Stark Street and Shawn started looking out for the right house. It was not one of the nicest areas of the city, but it wasn't a really bad neighbourhood, either. Working class, some single family homes and a larger number of apartment complexes where the rent was far cheaper. Patrick Winston lived in one of the apartment complexes. Gus pulled the car into an empty spot in front of the building and they both got out of the car.

"You can wait down here if you want to", Shawn said, but Gus merely shook his head.

"No, I'll come with you. Just to make sure that talking is all you've got in mind. Remember that there is not one single piece of evidence against him."

"Gus, you know me. I only need to take a look around, then I'll know what to think of him."

The front door was left unlocked, and the two friends went into the dark corridor that led towards the stairs. Shawn stopped in front of the mailboxes.

"Apartment 3B", he said and the two of them started to climb the stairs. 3B was on the third floor, the apartment to the left of the stairs. Without hesitation, Shawn stood in front of the door and knocked. At first, nobody answered, but just as Shawn was about to knock again, there were shuffling steps from inside and a muffled voice mumbled something unintelligible. A moment later, the key chain was disengaged and Shawn found himself face to face with an older version of the face he had seen in his father's file.

The years hadn't exactly been kind to the man. Though he was only forty-five years old, his hair had gone prematurely grey and the hairline was receding. He hadn't shaved in a couple of days, which gave his thin face a rather haggard appearance. Clad in a pair of oil-stained jeans and an old and washed-out sweatshirt, he watched Shawn suspiciously.

"Patrick Winston?", Shawn asked.

"Who wants to know?", Winston asked, his voice gruff and harsh.

"My name is Shawn Spencer. I need to ask you some questions."

One bushy grey eyebrow rose slowly. "Oh yeah? And why would I need to answer any questions?"

"This is about a police investigation", Shawn lied, ignoring Gus' gasp of surprise. "I'm a consultant for the SBPD, and I'm investigating the disappearance of a former police officer. The officer who was responsible for your arrest twelve years ago, to be precise. So, what do you know about Henry Spencer's whereabouts?"

Winston made move to wordlessly slam the door in Shawn's face, but Shawn reacted fast enough and put his foot in between the door and frame.

"Get your foot out of my door!", Winston yelled as he struggled to close the security chain on the door.

And suddenly Shawn saw red. That man wouldn't close the door in his face. This man wouldn't stop him from finding his father. He couldn't allow his one and only lead in the search for his father to slam the door in his face.

"Not until you tell me where my father is!", Shawn yelled and started throwing himself against the door with his full weight. He didn't even notice that Gus was pulling at his arm, trying to hold him back.

"I have no bloody idea where the bastard is", Winston snarled as he finally managed to close the security chain. Shawn's foot was still in the door, but the chain provided a pretty firm obstacle in opening the door. "And I don't care what happened to him. The last time I saw him was when he testified at my trial. And now get your foot out my door or I'll call the police!"

But Shawn didn't even consider this an option. He needed to get into the apartment, he needed to get a good look around, that would be enough for him to find out where his father was.

"I work for the police! And now open this damn door and tell me where my father is!"

"Shawn", Gus yelled from behind him, but Shawn angrily pushed his friend away and turned back towards Winston.

"As soon as you go for the phone I'm going to break down this door, do you understand? I know you held a grudge against my father because he arrested you, and I know that you had the means to get a boat without anybody thinking anything of it! So what did you do to him?"

Winston's eyes darted back into the living room for a moment. Shawn guessed that this was where his phone was, and that he was trying to figure out his chances of getting there before Shawn managed to break down the door. He seemingly decided that his chances were better if he stayed at the door and continued his attempts at pushing it close again.

But Shawn's foot still wouldn't budge.

"Listen, I don't know what your problem is, but I have no idea what you are talking about!"

Shawn laughed. "Of course you haven't. Let me guess, you haven't been out on a boat recently. Like last Tuesday, for example?"

"No, I wasn't. And I'll only tell you one last time to get your foot out my door and leave me the hell alone!"

As an answer, Shawn stemmed his shoulder into the door and pushed. At the same time he was reaching into the apartment for the security chain to dislodge it. Not that he had a chance of dislodging it while the door was still open, but Shawn wasn't thinking clearly. All he could think about was that Patrick Winston was the only person who could possibly have something to do with his father's disappearance, and one way or another he was going to get the truth out of the guy. He had to, because otherwise the body in Ventura would turn out to be his Dad, and the one thing Shawn was sure of at this very moment was that he wouldn't be able to stand that. His Dad couldn't be dead, and the only thing Shawn could do to make sure that this became true was if he made Winston tell the truth.

Gus was pulling at his arm again, trying to drag him away from the door, but Shawn was so enraged that he didn't have a chance. Gus pulled at Shawn, who pushed at the door, which Winston pushed against from the other side, and for a few long minutes that was all that happened.

The door to apartment 3A didn't open despite all the ruckus and shouting, and no matter how much Winston pushed and no matter how much Gus pulled at him, Shawn didn't let go. Because if he let go, his Dad would be dead. He just couldn't let go.

But suddenly, Gus' grip seemed stronger, and Shawn could do nothing against being dragged away from the apartment door. Panting from the exertion, Shawn realised that it wasn't just Gus who was holding him back only when his back was pushed against the opposite wall and he found himself looking at Gus and Lassiter.

That confused Shawn so badly that he immediately stopped struggling against the two men and stared at the detective in complete and utter bewilderment.

"Lassie? What are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing here, Spencer? I'm stopping you from doing something so incredibly stupid that it tops everything I thought even you were capable of."

He didn't relinquish his tight hold on Shawn's arms as he pulled him over towards the staircase. Only now Shawn saw Juliet standing in front of the apartment door, talking to Patrick Winston through the small gap that was left open by the security chain the man still hadn't unlocked. Shawn made a move towards the door, but Lassiter's iron grip on his arms tightened and the detective non-too gently pulled Shawn down the stairs.

"How…how come you are here?", Shawn finally managed to asked as Lassiter pushed him into the back of his car.

"Guster called us while you were busy trying to break down that man's door."

Shawn froze. "Gus called you? Gus _called_ you?"

"Yes, and it's a good thing that at least one of you seems to have a brain that's in working order. You were lucky that O'Hara and I were on our way back from a crime scene and were in the area. Can you tell me what the hell you were thinking, Spencer?"

But Shawn silently sagged in on himself on the backseat and sat the remaining drive in silence. Everything came crashing down on him at once. He hadn't managed to get anything out of Winston, and that meant that his father was dead. He had had his chance to find his Dad alive, but he hadn't used it. He had failed and now his father was dead.

Numbly, Shawn registered how Lassiter pulled the car into the police parking lot. He didn't protest as the detective led him into the station, and didn't even say anything as Lassiter guided him into one of the interrogation rooms and told him to sit down in one of the chairs. Lassiter left the door open, probably to show Shawn that he wasn't officially in custody, but it was an empty gesture because Shawn didn't even notice.

He only looked up again as Lassiter came back into the room what could have been five minutes or five hours later. The head detective closed the door behind himself, pulled out the only other chair in the room and sat down so that he was facing Shawn.

"Patrick Winston agreed not to press charges against you, Spencer."

Shawn nodded numbly. Lassiter's expression darkened, which a casual observer might have considered impossible, but the fake psychic didn't even see it.

"You can thank O'Hara for that, she convinced Winston that not pressing charges would be the better idea."

Again, Shawn nodded silently.

"However, I strongly advice you to apologize to the man."

Another nod, this time accompanied by a shrug.

Angrily, Lassiter slammed his palms on the table. "Damn it, what is wrong with you, Spencer?"

Shawn shrugged again. "He was the only one who had a reason to harm my Dad."

Lassiter sighed and tiredly rubbed his temples.

"Listen Spencer, I know that this is had for you to accept…"

"I'm not in the mood for that kind of speech right now, _detective_", Shawn snapped. "If Winston is not pressing charges, am I free to go? Or are you going to read me my rights?"

Lassiter sighed and gestured towards the door. "You're free to go, Spencer. However, I'm sure that Chief Vick will want a word with you once she hears about this. And that will be tomorrow morning at the latest."

Shawn shrugged. "She has my number."

He got up from his chair and without another word left the interrogation room. He didn't know where he wanted to go, he only knew that he needed to get out of the police station. He didn't pay any mind to the officers he passed on his way, people he'd normally have greeted at the very least, if not stayed for a chat. But not today. Today he didn't even look at anybody else as he left the building.

Outside in the parking lot, the first thing he noticed was Gus' car. Gus was standing beside it, leaning against the hood, watching as his friend went down the steps.

"Shawn, wait up!"

Shawn rolled his eyes, but he stopped on his way towards the street.

"What?"

Seeing that Shawn wasn't about to come over towards the car, Gus sighed and walked towards him.

"Are you trying to ignore me now?"

"You called the cops on me! What exactly am I supposed to do, get down on my knees and thank you?"

Gus shook his head. "I didn't call the cops, I called _Juliet_. That's a difference. Had I called 911, this whole thing would have ended a lot worse for you. And what was I supposed to do? Shawn, you were trying to break that man's door down and I couldn't hold you back. You didn't see the look in your eyes. It scared me, all right? I didn't call Juliet because I wanted to annoy you, I called her because I alone couldn't stop you from doing something you'd have regretted as soon as you were able to think clearly again. So don't give me any of that self-righteous crap now, all right? It was you who freaked out. _I just want to talk to him_. Sure, talk my ass."

Shawn ran his hands through his hair. He suddenly felt very tired. Right now, he didn't want to listen to any lectures. He didn't want to listen to anything, really. He only wanted to get away from everything before the floodgates in his head would open up. He wanted to be alone once all his thoughts would come crashing down on him.

"Listen Gus, I know that you're pretty pissed about what happened but I…I just can't do this right now. I can't. I need to be alone for a while."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"But I do. I'll give you a call later, I promise, but right now I need to wrap my mind around a few things. And I need to be alone for that."

Gus watched his friend for a long moment, and Shawn wondered what exactly he was searching for in his face. Or whether he found it. He must have, because after a moment he nodded.

"All right. But if you haven't called me by nine, I'm going to call Juliet again."

Shawn nodded. "Thanks Gus."

He watched as Gus hesitantly climbed into his car and drove off. Then he turned back towards the street and started walking. There was a bar not too far down the street. It was four in the afternoon, Shawn figured that wasn't too early for a beer.


	6. Stage 4: Depression

**Chapter 5 – Stage 4: Depression**

The bar turned out to be a small pub called "Seamus' Inn", and it was pretty much empty when Shawn entered. Two men were sitting at the bar, and another group of four older men was sitting at a table in the back, that was it. Shawn took a stool on the bar as far away from the other men as possible and ordered a beer. His plan for the remaining afternoon an evening was to get thoroughly drunk, and he figured beer was as good a start as anything else.

The barkeeper put the bottle down in front of him without saying a word. Either he wasn't very customer-oriented, or he was one of the really good barkeepers who could read their customers within moments and give them just the treatment the had come into the bar for. Chatting their sorrows away or silently drowning themselves. Right now, Shawn wanted the latter, and he got it.

The first beer went down like water, and Shawn quickly ordered a second one. That he'd have to drink a little more slowly. Shawn was a bit of a lightweight, if he drank too many beers too quickly now he'd be lying in front of the bar in no time.

So he tackled the second beer more slowly. His mind started to wander to what had happened over the past day. It had been just slightly more than twenty-four hours ago that Gus had said those fateful words to him. _He's dead_. But Shawn had steadfastly refused to believe those words. And to what end?

He had destroyed thirty years worth of breakable memories on his father's attic, he had yelled at the people who only wanted to help, no matter how clumsily they did try, and to top it all he had nearly attacked a man today.

All because of that stupid idea that somehow he could influence whether or not the body down in Ventura would turn out to be his father. It had been a thought to hold on to, a way to stop himself from going mad with the sheer terror of the thought that his father was dead. But now there was nothing to stop the truth from sinking in.

His father had gone out on his boat.

Something had happened out at sea. Something that had caused his father's blood to be found on the boat.

Then the empty boat had been found.

And for the past four days, there had been no trace of his father. No word, no news, nothing.

Sometimes, there was no big conspiracy to unveil. Sometimes, the truth was right there, laid out in plain letters. Shawn had just refused to see it. But if that was the case, then why did it still feel so awfully wrong?

Shawn was finishing his second beer when somebody slid into the barstool beside him. At first, Shawn didn't even bother to look up, but then the man beside him spoke.

"I'll take a beer, and give him another one on me."

Shawn turned to find Larry Norton sitting next to him. The man smiled at him and when the barkeeper brought the two beers, he raised his bottle slightly towards Shawn.

"You looked as if you needed a drink."

"Thank you."

He raised his bottle as well and took a deep sip. "What brings you here?"

Larry shrugged. "I had a couple of errands to run downtown. And after waiting in line at the bank for over half an hour, I figured a beer was in order. How about you?"

"I just needed a beer."

Larry nodded. "It hit home, then."

Shawn, how had been in the process of taking another sip of beer, paused with the bottle midway to his mouth. "What?"

"In my experience, when somebody close to you dies, it takes a while for the reality to hit home. But when it does, it feels like a hit to the gut. You seemed to be holding it together pretty well when I dropped by your office earlier. Not like somebody who'd start propping up the bar by early afternoon."

Shawn delayed the need to answer for a moment by taking another swallow of his beer. Larry watched him with a knowing expression on his face.

"It was like that when my Dad died. I was much younger than you are, but still I think it's not been that much different. I was eleven when he died. Vietnam. It was all so distant and unrealistic. He went to war, and suddenly everybody kept telling me that he'd never come back. I couldn't believe it for a long while. Despite the casket that came back and despite the funeral. It hit home during the first baseball game I played after his death. It was the league finals, and everybody's parents were there. That's when I realised that my Dad would never come to one of my games again. That he'd never be around again for anything. That's when it hit home. I think if I'd been older I'd have spend the rest of the day in a bar, too. As it was, I spent it in my bedroom, crying." He shrugged and took another swig of his beer. "So I guess I know a little of what you're going through right now."

Shawn shrugged noncommittally. "Yeah, maybe. I don't know, it's been a lot to take in."

Larry nodded. "Sure. I understand if you don't want to talk about it. Let's just have a toast." He raised his bottle. "To Henry. He could be a son of a bitch, but we're going to miss him."

Shawn clanked his bottle against Larry's and took another sip of beer. Suddenly, his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the display. Lassiter. Shawn didn't know what the detective was calling for, but he had a feeling about it. And he had the feeling that he didn't want to take that call here, in the middle of a bar. He quickly tossed some money for his first two beers on the counter and turned towards Larry.

"I gotta go. Thanks for the beer, Larry."

"You're welcome. If there's anything you need, just let me know."

"Thanks."

Shawn quickly hurried out of the bar and finally answered his cell phone.

"Hello?"

"Spencer, it's Lassiter."

"Hey Lassie. Any news?"

There was a slight pause. "The Chief just called. She's on her way back from Ventura right now. They're backlogged at the morgue there, so she had to stay and make some pressure for them to finish the identification of the body that drifted ashore. The results just came through."

Shawn ran his free hand through his hair and tried to brace himself. But how could he brace himself for the news that his father was dead? Shawn tried to breathe deeply with no success. If the mere thought that his father _could_ be dead was so gut-wrenchingly painful, how would he be able to stand what he was about to hear now? Solely the imagination that this pain would get any worse made Shawn want to lock himself away and pretend that the real world didn't exist.

"Spencer, are you still there?"

Shawn nodded, though Lassiter couldn't see him. "Sure, I'm still here."

Though I don't want to, he thought. But here I am, listening to Lassiter telling me that my father is dead.

"They made the identification?", Shawn asked.

"Yes. There wasn't any need to run the DNA, the dental records proved enough in the end. The body in Ventura isn't your father."

Shawn, already on the verge of asking how and when his father's body would be brought to Santa Barbara, froze. "What?"

"It's not Henry."

"They're sure?"

"Yes, the coroner was one hundred percent sure. Otherwise he would have insisted on running a DNA comparison."

Shawn leaned back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. His heart was hammering in his chest and he had difficulties drawing breath.

"All right. Thanks for telling me."

He disconnected the call and for a few minutes he remained leaning against the wall, his mind too overloaded to form even a single coherent thought.

The body that had drifted ashore wasn't his father.

That was supposed to be good news. Only that it wasn't.

He should feel relieved about the news. Only that he didn't.

Because suddenly he saw it with horrible clarity. That body in Ventura, whoever he had been, was not connected to his father in any way. And just because this body hadn't turned out to be his father's didn't mean that his Dad was still alive.

And that was the worst feeling of them all.

Shawn didn't know where to draw hope from anymore. There were no more leads to pursue, no more things to uncover. There were only bits and pieces which all said the same thing – that his father was dead.

And the thought hurt, but Shawn didn't even know why that thought hurt so much. Because the last time he had seen his father, they had yelled at each other? Or because he knew that this nagging feeling of insecurity, of _not_ knowing for a fact and without the tiniest shred of a doubt that his father was dead, was eating him up from the inside? Because of both? Because of neither?

Without a conscious thought, Shawn started walking. If his brain was already working on autopilot, his legs could do the same. He was barely aware of the roads he was walking, the street-blocks he was passing, the headlights of cars passing by. He didn't even know where he was going until he found himself in front of the door to Gus' apartment building. It must have taken him at least forty minutes to get here on foot, and he couldn't remember a single moment of it. He was probably lucky that he hadn't been hit by a car. He had a distinct memory of cars honking, but he couldn't tell whether that had been directed at him.

The front door of Gus' apartment building was unlocked, so Shawn went directly up to the second floor landing. Gus opened the door quickly after Shawn rang the doorbell, and for a moment he merely stared silently at his friend. It could have been surprise, because normally Shawn never bothered to knock or ring the bell, he just let himself in.

"Shawn, what happened?"

"Lassiter called", Shawn rasped out.

"What did he say?"

Shawn stared down at the floor as if he was trying to memorise the pattern of the linoleum plates that covered the hallway.

"The body they found isn't Dad."

Gus nodded, clearly at a loss as to what to say in response to this. Shawn's behaviour suggested that he didn't consider this to be good news. After a few moments, Shawn looked up and straight into Gus' eyes.

"He's dead, isn't he?"

There was so much raw emotion in Shawn's voice that Gus visibly flinched.

"I don't see any other explanation, Shawn. I wish there was, but I just don't see how."

Shawn simply nodded. When he made no attempt to move, Gus reached for his arm and pulled his friend into the apartment. Shawn didn't resist as Gus led him into the living room and pushed him down onto the sofa. Shawn pulled his knees up against his chest, circled his arms around them and pressed his face against his knees.

"But he can't be. He can't be dead. Not like this. Not now. Not before I've figured out what it takes to be his son."

Gus sat down on the sofa beside his friend. For a few moments, the room was silent, and when Shawn finally spoke again his voice was rough and hoarse. "I can't do this, Gus. There were times when I really hated his guts, but even then he was still _there_. And now he simply isn't? Just like that? It's wrong. It just feels wrong."

"Yeah", Gus agreed. "It does."

"What if they never find him?"

"I don't know, Shawn."

"If they never find him, I'll never know for sure. I'll _know_, but there'll always be this little bit of doubt, and I don't think that I can stand that."

Gus drew a deep breath. "Listen Shawn, I don't know what to say."

"You don't need to say anything, Gus."

Gus ran a hand over his face. "Feels different."

Shawn leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. Gus saw that his friend's eyes were getting moist, but he knew better than to comment on it.

"I can't handle this, Gus. Not…not this."

"Shawn, you need to sleep."

Shawn abruptly turned his face down and stared at his friend. "What?"

"You barely slept last night. You look like hell, and you're exhausted. You need rest."

Shawn shook his head. "I doubt that I'll get any sleep tonight."

"I think your body will get the point. Have you eaten anything today?"

Shawn thought for a moment, then he shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"All right, then I'll fix you something to eat, and then you try to get some rest."

Shawn leaned his head in his hands. "I need to call her first."

Gus didn't need to ask who Shawn was talking about. Knowing what he did about the difficult triangle of relationships that connected Henry, Margaret and Shawn Spencer however, he did ask himself silently whether this was a good idea. But he swallowed all remarks down.

"You know where the phone is. Just call if you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen."

And he left Shawn alone. Shawn held the phone in his hands for some long minutes, contemplating whether this really was such a good idea. Especially right now. True enough, his Mom probably had a right to know about what had happened. But it wasn't that easy.

Shawn's relationship with both his parents wasn't easy. With his Dad there were the obvious fights, the emotional distance, the disapproval. But he had been the one who had raised Shawn. He had been the one who had tried to make a decent human being out of his son. True enough, he had failed in the one thing he had wanted to make of his son. He hadn't turned Shawn into a cop. But he had ingrained a sense of morals and justice into him, in his own somewhat distant and detached way.

His mother on the other hand had always been the caring one. Or rather, the openly affectionate one. She had been the one Shawn went to for a hug when he scratched his knee. But despite all that, his relationship with his mother was far more superficial than the one to his father. After all, she had been the one who had left, just like that. She was the one who had left her fourteen year old son and her husband because she had been worried to miss out on whatever it was she thought she needed in her life. She had left because she hadn't wanted to be a married working mom.

Sure, Shawn and his Dad fought all the time, but that was because they had things to fight about. Shawn loved his Mom, no doubt about it, but truth be told she and him weren't really close enough to know which fundamental things they disagreed on.

But he had to make that call.

Shawn didn't even bother to check what time it was in New Jersey right now, he simply punched in the number. The phone rang five times, and just as Shawn was prepared to face the answering machine, his mother picked up, her voice tired and sleepy.

"Hello?"

"Mom, it's me."

There was a rustling sound, as if Margaret was sitting up in bed.

"Sorry if I woke you", Shawn added.

"Shawn, what's wrong? Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

"I'm all right. I'm not calling about me. It's…it's Dad."

"Henry? What about him?"

"There was an accident. He went out on his boat, alone, so nobody really knows what happened, but he must have gone overboard." He realised that he was babbling. But it was so much easier to babble than to face the truth.

"Shawn? What are you trying to say?"

Shawn drew a deep breath before he dared to speak out the words for the first time.

"He's dead. Dad is dead, Mom."  
That statement was met with a few seconds of silence. When Margaret spoke again, her voice sounded slightly breathless. "Oh my God. Henry…dead? But, that can't be."

Shawn sighed. "I know."

"Do you need me to come over?"

Shawn didn't _need_ her to come over. What he was asking himself was whether he _wanted_ her to come over. This was already bad enough without having to face his mother right now. His Mom hadn't seen his father in over ten years, there was no need for her to come to Santa Barbara now. "No. It's all right. Well, it's not all right, but there's no need for you to fly across the country now. There's nothing you could do."

"You'll let me know when the funeral is."

The funeral. Shawn hadn't even thought about that yet. Could there be a funeral if there wasn't even a body?

"I will. Bye Mom."

"Bye Shawn. Call me if you need to talk. Or if there's anything else I can do."

"I will. Bye."  
"Goodbye."

Shawn disconnected and just sat on the sofa, phone still in hand, staring ahead and watching as the room slowly became darker and darkness settled.

He had just made it real. He had just told somebody that his father was dead. Which was about as real as it could get. A blow to the gut, Larry had said it felt like. That didn't even begin to describe it. A blow to the solar plexus that left him paralysed, knocked the air out of his lungs and squeezed his chest together so tightly that Shawn thought he'd never be able to breathe easily again.

But maybe that was what it felt like. What it would be feeling like from now on. Maybe that was what it was like to loose a father. Shawn couldn't tell, he had never been in the situation before. He had never hurt so much before.

And at this moment, in the darkness of Gus' living room, Shawn Spencer fell apart.

He put his face in his hands and gave in to the pain. He couldn't remember when he had last cried, but right now he did. He cried because the pain was just too much, the pain of realising that he had lost his father, because the last time he had seen his Dad they had been yelling at each other, because all they ever had done was yell at each other because that was far easier than finally owing up to the fact that they cared for each other and were just too stubborn, proud and stupid to admit it. He cried because all the important things in his relationship with his father had been postponed to later, had been pushed aside for the totally unimportant things they had wasted their time dealing with, and now there was no later.

There would never be a later.

His whole life had been about defying his father. And at the same time it had been about getting those small moments out of him that he'd never get again now. The glimpse of a smile that said _I'm proud of you_. The pat on a back in wordless acknowledgement of a job well done. The occasional and ever-too-rare hug. He might have never gotten his father to admitting that he had a Dad-crush on him, but now he knew for a fact that he had had a son-crush on his father and had never gotten around to telling him about that, either. There were far too many things unspoken and undone between them, and the time to set them right was over now. Once and for all.

And in that one moment, Shawn knew for a fact that a single person could only stand so much pain without breaking. And he was well beyond this point.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

When Gus came back into the living room and found Shawn as a huddled mess on the sofa, he hesitated. He knew his friend, and he knew that contrary to what his fake psychic work suggested, there were moments when Shawn didn't want an audience. This was such a moment. But the hesitation only lasted a few seconds. He was no audience, he was Shawn's friend. And from the looks of it, Shawn needed a friend right now.

Silently, Gus sat down on the sofa beside Shawn and put a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. He didn't try to hug Shawn, or throw any useless platitudes his way, he just sat there beside him as Shawn struggled for breath in between his sobs, and silently let him know that he wasn't alone. Which wasn't even true, because Shawn was damn right alone in his pain right now. But Gus was beside him at least, and if there was anything he could do, he would. Shawn knew that, so Gus didn't need to say it out loud.

Shawn needed to fall apart now if there was any hope of him putting himself back together again. He needed to get it out of his system before he'd be able to deal with the rat-tail of things that he'd have to face during the next few days. So once Shawn had let it all out, Gus would fix him something to eat. Then he'd make sure Shawn got some sleep, and he didn't care if he had to spike his drink with something to get him there. Shawn would finally get some rest tonight, and tomorrow they'd just have to see what was waiting for them to deal with.

He'd call in at work tomorrow, tell them he wouldn't be able to come for the next couple of days. This was a family emergency, they'd just have to do without him for as long as it took.


	7. Stage 5: Acceptance

**Chapter 7 – Stage 5: Acceptance**

For the second time in two days, Shawn woke up with the sensation of not knowing where exactly he was. It was already light outside, and as his eyes slowly adjusted to being open again, Shawn realised that he was lying on the sofa in Gus' living room.

And then he remembered how he had ended up here. Well, not exactly in the last detail. He remembered calling his Mom, and he remembered breaking down after that call, though he couldn't for the life of him remember for how long he had been sitting in the dark living room, crying with Gus sitting beside him. But no matter if it had been ten minutes or a whole hour, Gus had remained beside him in silent support.

And then Gus had cooked dinner and had forced Shawn to eat a whole plate of macaroni and cheese. And then…well, that was when things started to get a little blurry. He didn't remember falling asleep on the sofa, and he definitely didn't remember finding a blanket before he had lain down, so covering him with the blanket must have been Gus' work.

Slowly, Shawn sat up on the sofa and tiredly rubbed his eyes. There were sounds coming from the kitchen, so Shawn went there. He found Gus in there, setting the table for breakfast.

"'Morning", Shawn mumbled as he sank down into one of the kitchen chairs and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Gus handed him.

"Good morning. How are you feeling?"

Shawn shrugged. "All right. A little tired."

"No headaches? Any nausea?"

Shawn abruptly looked up at his friend. "You drugged me?"

Gus grinned and put a plate of eggs down in front of Shawn. "Don't work yourself up about it, I remember one time when you did the exact same thing to me, when you wanted to drive to Palo Alto for a suspect interrogation, if you care to remember. You needed rest, and it was only a mild drug I gave you, so don't expect me to apologise."  
Shawn shook his head with a slight smile. "No, I don't expect you to apologise. Thanks Gus. For being there, and for keeping your head when I…you know. When I freaked."

"No need to thank me. And now eat your breakfast." But there was a small smile on his face as he said it.

Shawn did, but in between two bites, another thought occurred to him. "Don't you have to go to work?"

Gus shook his head. "No, I called in today and told them I wouldn't come in for the next couple of days. It's Saturday anyway, somebody else can do that presentation on the new drugs I was supposed to hold today."

Shawn nodded and continued on his breakfast. He knew that Gus had actually been looking forward to that presentation because some of the bosses of Central Coast Pharmaceuticals would be present. The fact that Gus gave up holding that presentation was a bigger thing than Gus let on, and Shawn appreciated it. Truth be told, he was a little scared because he had absolutely no idea what bureaucratic nightmare was expecting him now.

"So what are you planning to do now?"

Shawn finished his eggs and coffee. "I don't know. I need to drop by at the station and talk to the Chief. I don't have any idea what is going to happen now. I mean, there surely are rules about what to do when people are missing at sea. You know, what the official procedures are when somebody goes missing at sea. And then…well, I don't know. I think I'll know more after my visit to the station."

"I'll come with you."

Shawn nodded. "Thanks."

They finished breakfast in silence, then they left. As Shawn's bike was still parked where he had left it two days ago, in front of his apartment, the two got into Gus' car. They stopped briefly at Shawn's apartment for a shower and a change of clothes, then drove on to the police station. Though it was still rather early, for Shawn's standards at least, it promised to become a bright and sunny day. As Shawn looked out the window while Gus drove downtown, he thought how unfitting it all was. True enough, they lived in California. The weather was good for most of the year. But somehow, he couldn't shake off the feeling that it shouldn't be just this bright and sunny. He wasn't expecting a rainstorm, but something a little more oppressive than the average bright and sunny Californian early summer day seemed more appropriate for the day when he faced his father's death.

They rode in silence until Gus pulled into a parking slot in front of the station. They got out and entered the building, just like they had done many times before. Only this time, they weren't coming for a case.

The door to Chief Vick's office as well as all the blinds were closed. Normally, this wouldn't have kept Shawn from barging in and announcing his presence, but today was different in a lot of aspects. Spotting Lassiter sitting behind his desk, Shawn swerved to the left and approached the head detective. Lassiter was working through a file, but as steps approached his desk he looked up. The eye-roll that followed his recognising just who was dropping by for a visit was award material.

"Spencer. What do you want?"

Shawn pointed at Vick's office door. "Talk to the Chief."  
"It's not as if a closed door is normally enough to stop you", Lassiter said with a frown.

Shawn shrugged. "Yeah, well I figured that I have already used up most of the leniency that's normally brought forth towards me here. Trying out a different approach might not be too bad of an idea." He shrugged again. "But enough of that. Where's Jules?"

"O'Hara is interviewing a store-owner downtown who reported a robbery but for whom speaking to a normal beat cop wasn't high enough on the food-chain. So unfortunately you don't have anybody to bother while you wait for the Chief to finish her meeting."

"Oh, but I can always bother you, Lassie", Shawn said and pulled up a chair. Lassiter cast a suffering look at Gus, who only shrugged. "Don't look at me, detective. I'm going for coffee." And he left.

"Who is the Chief meeting with?"

"Not that it's any of your interest, but she has a meeting with the mayor right now. Their weekly meeting to be precise, which means this will last at least another half hour. Maybe more. So why don't you do me a favour and go to the playground until she's finished?"

Shawn grinned. He didn't actually feel like it, but it was surprisingly easy to fall back into his normal bantering habits with Lassiter. And it actually felt good. It was a lot of pretending, of course, but it was a relief from being so awfully tense all the time.

"Last time Gus and I went to a playground, somebody called the police. If you don't mind, I'm just going to wait here."

"I do mind, Spencer."

"Thanks Lassie", Shawn said as he got more comfortable in Lassiter's visitor chair. "I knew I could count on you. Now, don't let me keep you from doing your work."

"I wish I could." But with a shake of his head, Lassiter went back to doing his paperwork. Shawn watched what he was doing for all but two minutes before he got too bored.

"What's the case, Lassie?"

Lassiter sighed dramatically, and finished filling out a form before he looked up. "Arson in the lab of a high-school. And before you ask, no, you cannot get involved. Suspects have confessed, two sixteen-year olds who were bored. I'm just wrapping it up."

"And nobody wraps things up the way you do!"

Lassiter looked at Shawn for a long moment, then he put down his pen and closed his file with a sigh. "Listen Spencer. I'm probably the last person on earth who wants to have this conversation with you, but don't you think you're working a little too hard on keeping up the cheery façade? Only yesterday you nearly broke down a man's door because you suspected him of having kidnapped your father."

Shawn crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared at a point somewhere to the left of Lassiter's face.

"I kinda wasn't myself yesterday, all right? I got a few things out of my system since then."

Lassiter raised both eyebrows. "Anything I should keep my eyes open for in last night's reports?"

"No. Nothing like that."

Lassiter looked at Shawn for another long moment, struggling with something. Finally, he looked at all the desks in the vicinity to see if they were alone.

"All right, Spencer. Nobody is here to overhear this, and if you ever so much as breathe a word of what I'm going to say to anybody, and that includes Guster, I will deny everything. But fact is Henry was a cop. A damn good one at that. Which is why everybody here at the department was doing double shifts and tried to find him while there was still hope to find him alive. The people here respected him, and what he stood for. If there's anything that needs to be done, any help you need, there's nobody here who'll say no if you ask them. And that includes me."

Normally, Shawn would have answered such a statement with a wide grin and something along the lines of "Awww Lassie, you do care!", but right now he just nodded.

"Thanks. But right now I don't even know what needs to be done."

"That why you came here to talk to the Chief?"

Shawn nodded. "Yes. I wanted to ask her what the next steps are going to be."

Lassiter leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "That really depends on what you want to do. It's international law that a missing person cannot be declared dead if their body isn't found. Not for seven years, at least. But there are regulations on how a missing person's assets can be managed in their absence. And there are exceptions to that seven-year period."

It sounded harsh the way Lassiter said it. Shawn was sure that it hadn't been the detective's intention, but the facts were harsh. It was one thing for Shawn to accept that his father was dead, but another thing entirely to start thinking about the steps that were to follow. His father's status as a missing person. What to do with the house. What to do about a funeral. Informing the people who needed to know. Shawn's grandparents were dead, but there were two of his father's cousins who needed to be told what had happened.

"What kind of exceptions are those?"

"Well, there are situations when a person's death is apparent even if there is no body to be found. Like in the case of people who go missing at sea after boating accidents. Or mountain climbers who never make it back. In those cases it is far easier to legally declare a person dead. We need to check in with the Coast Guard again, and as always there's some legal babble involved, but in case of your father that is what is going to happen over the course of the next days. As soon as the police officially closes the case with the result that your father drowned at sea with no sign of foul play involved, he can be declared dead even though his body hasn't been found yet. And then his assets can be managed. A funeral can be arranged."

Shawn ran a hand through his hair. "I hadn't thought it would go that fast."

Lassiter drew breath to answer, but was interrupted by Gus' arrival. He held two cups of takeaway coffee in his hands and placed one in front of Shawn. "That what would go that fast?", he asked.

"Closing the investigation on my father's disappearance", Shawn said as he took the cup.

Lassiter nodded. "Yes. But compared to years of waiting and not knowing, it might be the preferable alternative. Legally, it's a complicated thing to manage a missing person's assets, even for somebody who has power of attorney. And it means closure. And without wanting to sound harsh, your father's case isn't exactly the case of a soldier gone missing in the war who might be a prisoner somewhere."

Something clicked in Shawn's head and suddenly all his internal alarm bells started ringing.

"What is it?", Gus, who had noticed the shift in his friend's behaviour, asked with a worried frown.

Shawn only raised his hand to ward off any further questions and tried to catch the one notion that had made his hair stand up on end. He knew it was important, Lassiter had said something really important, and he needed to hold the thought before it was gone again.

A soldier gone missing in the war, Lassiter had said. War. What was it about that word that had clicked? And then he knew it, and suddenly it all made sense.

_I knew your f__ather. _

_We went to school together, back in the day._

_It was like that when my father died. _

_I was eleven when he died. Vietnam._

"Shawn?" Gus put a hand on his friend's shoulder and was shocked to notice how tense the muscles under his hand were. "What's wrong?"

"The bastard", Shawn brought out from behind clenched teeth.

"Who, me?", Lassiter asked with a frown that was half-confused, half-angry, but Shawn didn't even hear him.

"The bastard", Shawn repeated and slammed his palm on Lassiter's desk.

"Who Shawn? What's going on?"

"Larry, that's who. The bastard lied to me!"

Shawn abruptly jumped off his chair and started pacing up and down in front of Lassiter's desk, running his hands through his hair.

"Larry?", Gus asked?

"Who is Larry?", Lassiter threw in.

"Larry! That guy who dropped by the office yesterday. Condolence visit, my ass. And it was no accident that I met him at the bar yesterday, he's been following me around!"

"Spencer, sit down. And then start telling the story from the beginning, I don't understand a word you're saying."

Shawn sat back down in his chair and looked at Lassiter, a gleam in his eyes which had been missing for the past days.

"A guy dropped by the office yesterday. He introduced himself as Larry Norton and said he had been a classmate of my Dad who dropped by to express his condolences. I knew his face from somewhere, so I didn't think much of it. Yesterday after I left the station I went for a beer in that pub down the street. That's where I met him again."

"All right." Lassiter nodded slowly. "So where does the part about him being a bastard come in?"

"It's what you just said!"

"Me?"

"Yes Lassie, you! About missing soldiers, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you said war."

It was obvious from the expression on Lassiter's face that he thought Shawn had gone off the deep end now. "And?"

Shawn shook his head. "This Larry introduced himself as a classmate of my father. I didn't think much about it, I even forgot it. Just took it by face value, didn't question it, whatever. But later when we met at that bar, he told me some crack and bull story about knowing what I felt like because it was like that for him when his father died in Vietnam."

He looked expectantly from Lassiter to Gus, but both were simply staring at him as if he was raving mad.

"Don't you get it?"

"No Shawn, I have to admit that I don't get it", Gus said. "What is it?"

"My Dad was born in 1950. If that Larry was his classmate, he was born at about the same time. 1950, maybe 1951. Even if it was 1952, it doesn't add up. He says his father died when he was eleven. That makes it 1961, maybe 1962. Even if he was born in 1952, then his father supposedly died in 1963. How on earth could his father have died in the Vietnam War when he was eleven if that war only started in 1965?"

For a moment, Lassiter and Gus were silent. Gus was staring at Shawn with wide eyes, but Lassiter seemed to have a perpetual frown etched onto his face.

"What is that supposed to mean, Spencer?"

"I don't know. I only know that he lied to me. Either he never was a classmate of my father or that whole Vietnam story was made up."

Lassiter shook his head. "Maybe he just got the dates wrong. There could be an easy explanation."

"Is your father still alive, Carlton?"

Dumbfolded, Lassiter shook his head. "No, he died in 1995."

"Would you ever get that date wrong? Would you ever tell somebody your Dad died when you were twenty-three when in reality he died when you were twenty-six?"

Lassiter shook his head. "No, of course not."

Shawn nodded. "Then why do you think Larry did?"

Lassiter sighed. "All right, so assuming he lied to you. So what?"

Shawn got up from his chair again and started pacing once more. "His sole purpose of visiting me was to tell me that he knew my father. Why would he lie about that?"

Lassiter drew breath to say something, but Shawn interrupted him. "Just do me one favour, please."

Two dark eyebrows rose in silent question. "What?"

"Look him up. Just look him up on the computer and see if there is anything wrong about him."

For a moment Shawn thought that Lassiter would deny the request, just to spite him. But with a long-suffering sigh, the head detective turned towards his computer and entered a few commands via the keyboard.

"His name was Larry Norton?"

"Yes."

Lassiter started typing, then he silently looked at the monitor for a few moments, clicked around with the mouse and typed some more. After a few seconds, a frown settled on his face.

"What is it?", Shawn asked, somewhat breathlessly. His heart had been beating fast in his chest for the past minutes. He didn't yet know what all this meant, but it had to mean something.

Finally, Lassiter looked up from his computer. "There is no Larry Norton living in Santa Barbara. Neither a Lawrence Norton. In fact, there are preciously few people named Norton in the whole county."

Shawn ran his hands through his hair and continued his pacing. "So he lied about his name. But why? And who is he?" With a frustrated sigh, he folded his hands behind his neck and stared ahead. "I knew him from somewhere. When he said his name it didn't ring a bell, but his face was familiar. I knew him."

"From where?", Gus asked, the first time he spoke in a few minutes.

Shawn stopped his pacing. He needed to focus right now. If he knew the man, then that information was stored somewhere in his memory and he only needed to access it.

_Close your eyes, Shawn._

It didn't really surprise him that he heard his father's voice in his head, and it didn't surprise him that he obeyed it, either.

_Focus. Think__, Shawn._

Automatically, he raised his hand and brought his fingers up to his temple.

"Oh no, please don't tell me you're getting a "vision", Spencer."

"I don't have time for that nonsense right now", Shawn snarled, his eyes still closed. He missed Gus' wide eyes of shock and Lassiter's expression of astonishment. "I need to think."

He had seen the man before. And it had been some time ago. And it had to do with his father. Where? When?

It was like a movie played on fast-forward in front of Shawn's closed eyes. He pulled people and faces from the deep recesses of his memory. No old classmate. None of his Dad's colleagues. No friend. Where did he know that man from?

For some reason he was sure that he had been with his father when he had seen the man. So where had he gone with his father? The police station. But that wasn't it. Where else? Fishing. Surely not. The courthouse.

Damn, the courthouse. Now he remembered. 1988. His Dad had had to testify in court that day. But it hadn't been a trial against "Larry", though, otherwise he'd have shown up in Shawn's perusal of his Dad's old files.

_Think, Shawn!_

But he had seen Larry sit in the front row that day, watching Henry Spencer as he testified.

"Dylan Sinclair." Shawn opened his eyes. "Dylan Sinclair, look him up Lassie."

"That's Norton's real name? And you just remembered that?"

Shawn shook his head. "No, it's not his name. But I've seen that Norton guy for the first time during the trial against Dylan Sinclair. In 1988."

Lassiter just stared at Shawn. "1988? How old were you, seven? And you just remembered that?"

"I was ten, and it doesn't matter right now. I'm sure that's where I've seen him." He got up from his chair and walked behind Lassiter's desk so that he could look at the computer monitor. "The trial was in the spring of 1988, that should be enough information to access the case-file, shouldn't it?"

Lassiter didn't look entirely convinced, but he typed in a few commands and pulled up the old file. Fortunately, all files up until thirty years back were archived electronically. After a few keystrokes, Dylan Sinclair's file appeared on the screen.

"Dylan Sinclair, born 1969, was convicted of first degree murder in 1988. After he dropped out of high-school, he started up as a small-time drug dealer. Seems like he had a short fuse, there's several convictions of violence on his rap sheet. In early 1988 a buyer wanted to rip him off, Sinclair pulled a gun on him and shot him. Somebody heard the shot and called the police, and your father was the responding officer. He arrested Sinclair on the scene as he was still busy trying to gather his merchandise and the money."

"Was there any doubt as to his guilt?"

Lassiter shook his head. "No. He even confessed, which got him off the death penalty. It was a pretty straightforward case, the trial only lasted two days. He was sentenced to life in prison." He scrolled down. "Hung himself in his cell in 2001."

Shawn frowned and ran his hands through his hair. "Is the witness list from the trial in that file?"

Lassiter nodded and called that up on the screen. "There it is."

Shawn scanned the list. "There!" He pointed his finger at the entry.

"Harold Sinclair. Dylan Sinclair's father", Lassiter said.

Lassiter called up another programme and typed in Harold Sinclair's name. A few windows popped up, all newspaper articles the file linked to. Lassiter opened one of the windows and an article popped up. Shawn looked at the picture atop the article and his heart stopped for a beat. It showed a man in front of the Santa Barbara courthouse, talking into the microphone of a reporter. It was the same man who had introduced himself as Larry Norton to Shawn only a day earlier. Of course he was younger in that picture, his hair was not yet grey and the lines on his face were not yet as pronounced as they were today. But it was the same man.

"It's him", Shawn said in a very low voice.

"That's the guy?", Lassiter asked in an incredulous voice that made it obvious how much he still doubted that Shawn had hit on something. Gus got up from his chair and made his way around Lassiter's desk as well. When he saw the picture, he nodded.

"That's the guy I saw coming out of the Psych office yesterday, yes."

Shawn straightened up and ran his hands over his face. "So the father of a perp my father arrested shows up a few days after my father vanishes at sea to express his condolences. He gives me a wrong name and some made-up story about them being school buddies. That's no coincidence. So why?"

Lassiter was clicking himself through the windows that had popped up together with the newspaper article. "It seems as if Sinclair senior wasn't convinced of his son's guilt. In fact, he publicly claimed that his son was being framed and that Dylan had only made that confession under pressure from the police. His theory was that his son was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got involved in an undercover narcotic operation gone wrong. He claims his son never shot the gun."

"Is there any possibility of that being true?", Gus asked, but Lassiter only shook his head.

"There was no narcotics undercover operation going on. The guy who was killed was too small a fish to be the target of an undercover operation. Besides, there was gunpowder residue on Sinclair's hands and his fingerprints were found on both the weapon and the bullets still in the chamber. And he confessed, in the presence of a lawyer. There's no way your father forced a confession out of him, even if he had wanted to, with a lawyer present that's just a ludicrous idea."

Shawn nodded. "So Sinclair is just a father who doesn't want to believe that his son was a criminal, and who blames the police for arresting the wrong guy. But why did he only act now? I mean, it's been nearly twenty years ago. Even his son's death has been six years ago."

Lassiter went back to working his computer. After a moment, he came up with the results. "Sinclair senior visited his son in prison just once, at the beginning of his sentence, then he never came back. He kept on giving interviews about his son's innocence for some time, but after the verdict and the confession, public interest in the case decreased rapidly. Sinclair moved to Alabama, but came back in early 2001. I don't have another visit to his son, but he called his son in prison once. Six months later, the son takes his life and…", he stopped speaking and started scrolling rapidly through a document.

"And what, Lassie?", Shawn asked impatiently.

"After his son's suicide, Sinclair had a nervous breakdown. He was hospitalised, and due to a psychiatric expertise that was done during that time he was sent to Angels of Mercy Psychiatric Institution in San Diego for further treatment. According to the psychiatrist, he posed a danger to himself and others. He was institutionalised."

"When was he released?"

"Only six months ago."

Shawn didn't know what he was supposed to feel like right now. Just as he thought he had come to terms with the fact that his father was dead, just as he thought he'd accept the fact and face the consequences, suddenly this came up. But he didn't dare to hope. Not yet. If he allowed himself to hope only to have that hope crushed again, he wouldn't be able to pull through. Not again. He barely dared to breathe as it was, hope was completely out of the question for now.

"This can't be a coincidence", Gus said, eyes still glued to Lassiter's computer screen. Shawn turned to look at the head detective only to find that Lassiter was staring straight ahead, eyes unfocussed, and that his face had become strangely pale.

"Lassie, are you all right?"

Lassiter focussed his eyes and shook his head. "Damn it." And just as suddenly as he had fallen into a stupor, Lassiter exploded into a flurry of activity. He pushed the mouse and keyboard aside and pulled a file out of his drawer. Shawn swallowed hard as he saw that it was his father's file. The words _Henry L. Spencer_ written in bold letters across the cover sent shivers down his spine.

Lassiter opened the file and hurriedly started leafing through the documents in there.

"Lassie?" Lassiter didn't answer, and Shawn swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. "Carlton, what's wrong?"

"Harold Sinclair. I only just remembered. I know that name. I'll be damned."

Shawn was breathing rapidly as he watched the head detective flip the pages hurriedly, not worried about bending or tearing the paper.

"How do you know him?"

Finally, Lassiter found the document he was searching for.

"When Henry's boat was found, the Coast Guard contacted all boats that had left a Santa Barbara harbour that morning, all boat rentals and all boats that were sighted in the vicinity that day. They questioned everybody about whether or not they had encountered Henry's boat or whether they had taken aboard a person drifting at sea." He ran his finger down the page, then suddenly stopped. "Harold Sinclair. He rented a small cabin cruiser from a local boat rental on Monday, rental was just for two days. He was out fishing on Tuesday and when he returned the boat late in the afternoon he was questioned whether he had seen anything. It says here that he was forthcoming and willing to help, but that he stated he had seen neither your father nor the boat."

Lassiter looked up at Shawn. "I'll be damned. You were right all along."

But Shawn still didn't dare to believe it. In fact, right now he didn't even dare to think what they had uncovered through to its logical conclusion – that his father might still be alive. Because even if Sinclair really had something to do with his Dad's disappearance, Henry had been in the man's hands for five days now.

"Where does he live?", Shawn rasped out.

"Watkins Boulevard. A small condo down by the ocean. Pretty sparsely populated down there, most houses don't have any immediate neighbours, but they all have direct access to the sea."

Shawn, Gus and Lassiter looked at each other for a long moment. It was obvious that they were all thinking the same thing, but neither of them dared to speak it out loud, as if it was a soap bubble that might burst at the tiniest touch. But it was something that hadn't been there for the past five days.

It was a lead.

It was hope.


	8. Anger: Revisited

**Chapter 8 – Anger****, revisited**

"So what do we do now?", Gus finally broke the silence between the three men.

Lassiter exhaled deeply. "First off, we don't get carried away. This might be something, but it might as well be nothing."

He picked up his phone and dialled a number.

"O'Hara, it's Lassiter. Meet me at 319 Watkins Boulevard ASAP. And radio for backup. Silent approach." He listened for a moment. "It's urgent, and I don't care what the store owner says. Let him deal with a patrol officer like everybody else."

He hung up without another word and got up from his chair.

"Where are you going?", Shawn asked, worried that the detective wouldn't let him come along.

"I'm going to get us a warrant. You wait here."

Lassiter strode over towards Chief Vick's door, knocked and then entered. As the door closed behind him, Shawn sank down in one of the chairs and clasped his hands in front of his face. "Damn."

There was nothing Gus could add to that heartfelt statement, so the two of them sat in silence. Gus only hoped that Lassiter wouldn't take too long in explaining what they had found out to Chief Vick. Right now Shawn might need a moment to get his breath back, but Gus knew his friend well enough to know that Shawn's patience would run out, soon.

It didn't take five minutes until the door to Chief Vick's office opened again and Lassiter came out. He walked directly towards the front doors, but paused when he passed his desk. "Are you two coming or not?"

Shawn was hurrying over towards the head detective before Lassiter had even finished speaking. The three men left the station hurriedly and got into Lassiter's car.

"What did the Chief say?", Shawn asked as he buckled himself into the passenger seat.

"She'll get us the warrant. She'll call as soon as she has it. And just for the record, the two of you are only here because you know Sinclair's address and wouldn't have stayed away, anyway. But this is a police investigation, so you will do as I say. You will stay in the car until I tell you to get out, is that understood?"

Gus nodded, but Shawn shook his head. "I'll stay back, but I won't wait until you've all declared the scene secure. I know how long that takes. I'll not stand in the way, but this is my father we're talking about."

Lassiter sighed deeply, but then seemingly decided to let the matter rest until they had actually arrived. As they pulled into Watkins Boulevard, Lassiter parked his car behind O'Hara's and got out. Around the corner, two more patrol cars were waiting. Shawn and Gus got out of the car as well and together the four of them went over to the other officers. On the way, Lassiter's cell phone started ringing and he answered it.

"Lassiter. Yes, I understand. Thank you."

He put the phone away and turned towards the other police officers. "All right, we're after a man named Harold Sinclair, living at 319 Watkins Boulevard. New evidence has come up which make him our lead suspect in the disappearance of former police officer Henry Spencer."

Juliet's eyes widened and she turned towards Shawn.

"Your father is alive?"

"He _might_ still be", Lassiter interrupted. "We have reason to believe Sinclair was at least involved in the accident at sea, we cannot be sure that he kidnapped Spencer and not merely killed him. Chief Vick just called, we have a warrant to search Sinclair's house and property. She'll arrive with the paperwork in a few minutes, but we have a go to commence without her. The suspect is a sixty-one year old while Caucasian, and he has a history of mental instability. We have to consider him armed and dangerous. You two", he looked at the officers' nametags, "McCauley and Fitch, you take the back door and the property. The rest of us takes the front. Guster, you stay in the car. Spencer, you stay back. Do I make myself clear, or do I have to cuff you to the steering wheel?"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "No, we're clear."

"Good. Two-ways on channel five, let's go."

The officers adjusted their radios and two of them vanished towards the back of the property. Lassiter and Juliet, along with the two other officers, went down the block towards the front entrance of the house and Shawn hurried after them. He did stay a few feet back, though, because he knew that Lassiter's threat about chaining him to the steering wheel had not been an empty threat.

Lassiter pounded on the door.

"Mr. Sinclair, it's the police. We have a warrant. Open up."

There was no reaction, and after maybe fifteen seconds of waiting, Lassiter gestured for one of the patrol officers to step forward. Only now did Shawn notice that the man was carrying a small ram. He made short work of the door, and in a flurry of drawn guns and yells of "Police!", the four officers vanished inside the house. Shawn silently counted to five, then he hurried after them.

The two patrol officers who had entered with Lassiter and O'Hara were securing the upstairs, Shawn caught a glimpse of one of the other officers in the back of the house, and Lassiter and O'Hara were going through the rooms to Shawn's left. All that Shawn heard were shouts of "Clear!" coming from every room.

They had come too late. Sinclair wasn't here anymore.

After a few moments, Lassiter came back into the hallway, gun still drawn but resting loosely by his leg. Juliet came after him in a similar pose. A moment later, there were steps on the stairs and the two officers came back downstairs.

"Upstairs is clear, no sign of anybody. As is the attic."

Lassiter nodded. "How about the back rooms?", he asked one of the other officers.

"All clear."

Shawn closed his eyes. This couldn't be happening. They had been so close, it had all sounded like the one logical explanation the had been searching for. But then a thought struck.

"The basement!"

Lassiter frowned at him. "I've never seen a beach house with a basement, Spencer. It's a bit difficult to dig into sand."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Didn't you take a look while we were outside? This house is built on solid ground, there has to be a basement."

Lassiter turned towards another of the officers. "Did you check the kitchen for doors?"

The officer shrugged. "Just a pantry door."

"Did you check it?"

The officer paled. "No, I didn't."

Lassiter rolled his eyes and together they went into the kitchen. There was the door, right next to the refrigerator, and Shawn seriously asked himself how somebody could have mistaken it for a pantry door. Lassiter raised his gun and wordlessly gestured for the other officers to have his back while he opened the door. The door revealed a dark staircase illuminated by a single light bulb leading down into the basement. Lassiter and Juliet gestured for the officers to cover the stairs while they went down, and two of the officers went outside to cover the entrances in case Sinclair was still there and somehow managed to make a run for it.

Shawn no longer cared about Lassiter's warning. This was his last chance, his last chance at finding out what had happened to his father. He wouldn't stand back and watch what the others did.

Once Lassiter and Juliet had secured the staircase, Shawn silently crept after them. The one officer who was standing upstairs watching the door looked at Shawn from wide eyes, but before he could say anything Shawn had already vanished down the stairs.

The basement was every cop's nightmare. There were shelves everywhere, stacked with boxes and other assorted stuff, creating at least a dozen corners in which one could hide and not be seen from the entrance. Shawn watched as Juliet, Lassiter and the patrol officer named Fitch slowly crept through the badly illuminated room, checking every corner, nook and cranny.

Just as Shawn's foot left the last step of the stairs, a lot of things happened at once.

He saw movement from the corner of his eyes, and before he knew what was happening Fitch, who had been attempting to check behind a shelf, was physically thrown back against the wall. His head collided with the wall and in a daze Fitch sank to the floor. The gun fell out of his limp hand and slid across the floor until it came to a stop halfway between Shawn and Fitch.

And at the same moment a dark shadow detached itself from the darkness behind the shelf and made a break for the door. Shawn didn't even think. Sinclair hadn't seen him, he must have watched where the three officers were going and have decided to make a break for the door now, while Lassiter and Juliet were on the other side of the basement. Shawn ran a few steps forward and threw himself against Sinclair with the full impact of his body-weight.

There was a grunting sound as the older man went down and Shawn quickly scrambled for Fitch's discarded gun. Sinclair would be on his feet again in no time, he needed to get to the gun before that happened.

Shawn's fingers closed around the butt of the gun and he straightened up, levelling the metal barrel at Sinclair's chest in one smooth movement.

"Don't move!", he yelled.

Sinclair, who had been in the process of getting up looked at Shawn and seemed to think about whether or not the younger man posed a serious threat. Shawn disengaged the safety catch and made sure there was a round in the chamber. It were automatic movements, and never once did he even break eye contact with Sinclair.

"I said don't move."

"Spencer", Lassiter yelled and steps hurried up behind him. "Put the gun down."

Shawn shook his head. "Not until he tells me where my father is."

Sinclair laughed. "You finally figured it out. Took you long enough. From what your father said, I thought you were a lot more clever than that."

"Where is he?"

"Put the gun down, Spencer", Lassiter repeated, but Shawn didn't listen. His field of vision was limited to Sinclair in front of him, he took absolutely no notice of Lassiter or Juliet standing beside him.

"Shawn, we've got him covered. Put the gun down."

Shawn shook his head. "Where is he?"

"Maybe you should listen to your cop friends, Shawn. Let the grown ups handle the situation, they're good at that. By the end of the night I'll have confessed to every unsolved crime in the whole fucking city", Sinclair spat.

"I don't care about your issues with your son's arrest. I want to know where my father is!"  
Sinclair laughed again. "And what are you going to do if I don't tell you? Shoot me?"  
Shawn pulled the trigger.

The report of the gunshot echoed loudly through the basement and Lassiter and Juliet who both hadn't expected it, visibly flinched. Sinclair gave a startled cry and started to run his hands along his face and head in search of the bullet hole that he suspected to be there. Shawn didn't waste a single thought on the bullet hole two inches besides Sinclair's head, instead he adjusted the aim of the gun a little to the left.

"Spencer, put the damn gun down. You nearly shot him!", Lassiter yelled.

"Had I wanted to shoot him he'd be dead by now", Shawn said in a completely detached voice. His gun arm never once wavered. "If I kill him he won't tell us where my father is."

"You're crazy", Sinclair panted and tried to scoot away from Shawn, but the barrel of the gun followed his movements.

"Look who's talking. Now I will ask for the very last time. Where is my father?"

Sinclair shook his head, but before Shawn could react in any way, Juliet suddenly stepped into his line of sight towards Sinclair.

"Juliet, get out of the way."

"No Shawn. Carlton has him covered. I'm going to cuff him now, and then you'll put the gun away."

As Juliet pulled out her cuffs and slapped them on Sinclair's wrists, behind his back, Lassiter slowly and carefully pushed Shawn's gun arm down.

"Fitch, get your weapon."

The gun was taken out of Shawn's hand, and Shawn allowed it to happen. Once Sinclair was cuffed and secured, Lassiter let out a breath that sounded more like a sigh. "Damn it Spencer, can you tell me how on earth I'm going to explain a civilian firing a service piece in my report?"

But Shawn didn't care. He just stared at Sinclair as if the force of his hateful glare alone would make the man finally confess to where his father was. That was when Lassiter took charge again.

"You feeling all right, Fitch?"

The young officer nodded.

"Good. McCauley, get down here!"

There were steps on the stairs and the other patrol cop came down. "Sir?"

"You and Fitch escort Sinclair to the squad car and drive him to the station. Read him his rights and inform Chief Vick, she'll have further instructions. Call an ambulance, just to be sure. And tell Guster that the house is secure."

When the two men led Sinclair out of the basement, Lassiter turned back towards Juliet.

"Found anything while frisking him?"

"If you're thinking about a little note saying "_Here's what I did to Henry Spencer_" the answer is no. I just found his keychain."

She handed the keys over to Lassiter who studied them attentively. "That's quite a lot of keys for one house."

He put them into an evidence bag and turned back towards Shawn.

"And you Spencer. What in the name of all that's good were you thinking, can you tell me that?"

But Shawn wasn't even listening. One hand buried in his hair, by now messed up beyond its usual unruly state, he was slowly walking around the basement as if searching for clues.

"Spencer, are you listening to me?"

"Lassie, Jules, over here!"

There was excitement in Shawn's voice, and Lassiter forgot his reprimands for the moment and followed the fake psychic's voice as he hurried over towards the other side of the basement where he was standing in front of a shelf.

"What is it?"

"This room doesn't run the entire length of the house. The basement should be bigger. And look here!"

He pointed to what at second glance appeared to be shallow scratches in the wall. Lassiter would have totally missed them if they hadn't been pointed out to him.

"What are those?"

"Scratches. Just as if this shelf here had been moved over towards the side a couple of times."

He started pushing at the shelf, and after a second of hesitation, Lassiter grabbed a hold of the wood and pushed along. But the shelf wouldn't bulge.

"There has to be a mechanism somewhere", Shawn panted in between pushes.

"I think I got it", Juliet said excitedly. "There's a lever here. Just wait a second."

She reached into one of the compartments of the shelf and a moment later a low click could be heard. And suddenly, the shelf moved to the side easily to reveal a door. Shawn immediately reached for the doorknob and tried to turn it.

"Locked."

"Hold on!"

Lassiter pulled out Sinclair's keychain and started sorting through the keys.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm doing this as fast as I can, Spencer. Hang on, that's it."

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Gun drawn and held out in front of him, he entered the new room that had been hidden behind the shelf. Juliet and Shawn followed half a step behind the detective, but a few steps into the room all three of them stopped short and stared at the display in front of them. It was Juliet who broke the silence first.

"Oh my God."


	9. A Tale of Woe

Erm, all right. This might not exactly resolve the cliffhanger issue, but I thought it was time to shed some light on what was going on...elsewhere over the past few days.

Enjoy!**  
**

**Chapter 9 – ****A Tale of Woe**

Henry Spencer opened his eyes with a groan. His head was pounding fiercely, as if a little man was sitting inside his skull, banging against his eyes from the inside with an ice-pick. And he didn't quite remember where he was and what had happened.

The last thing Henry remembered clearly was going out on his boat early in the morning. He had needed to get his head clear after the fight with Shawn. Henry had been royally pissed at his son during their shouting match, but he had been even more angry when Shawn had refused to answer any of his phones. He wouldn't even put it past Shawn to have left the city on that death trap on wheels he still insisted on driving, just to avoid confronting his father.

Henry clearly remembered going out on the boat, and now that he thought about it he also remembered casting his line. And then? There had been something. Another boat, that had been it. Another boat, a small cabin cruiser had approached his position. Henry had been outraged, and the last thing he remembered was that he had stood up in his boat, ready and willing to give whoever was on board of the other boat a piece of his mind about chasing away the fishes with the engine. The boat had gone alongside, which had astonished Henry and then…then he didn't really know what had happened. The last thing he remembered clearly was the surface of the ocean rushing up to meet him, then nothing.

Henry slowly sat up wherever it was he was lying and tried to get his bearings. His clothes were soaking wet, which meant he hadn't only imagined falling out of his boat. As he brought up his hand to his head, to the place above his left eyebrow where the pounding was worst, he hissed in pain and the fingers of his hand were red with blood when he brought them down again. He must have hit his head on the boat when he fell into the water. That explained why his head was pounding like mad.

Henry got up, slowly, but still he felt light-headed and the bile started to rise in his throat. He put his hands on his thighs, drew a couple of deep breaths and tried to fight down the nausea. It took a while, but slowly Henry managed to straighten up and look around the room he was in. His eyes widened at what he saw.

He was in a basement of sorts. At least he guessed that had to be it because there was no daylight coming into the room, and the walls seemed to be solid stone. A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated the room and the door in the opposite wall.

But Henry had no chance of getting to the door. The part of the room he was in was separated from the rest of the room by solid metal bars that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Henry put his hand on one of the bars and gave it an experimental shake. It didn't move, it was anchored firmly in both the floor and the ceiling.

Heart pounding in his chest, Henry looked around his small cell. Because that was what it was, he realised. One corner of the basement room had been separated by those bars, and it was roughly the size of a prison cell. And it was equipped just like a prison cell. There was nothing in there but the narrow bunk bed on which Henry had woken up. Though bed was maybe the wrong expression. It was a metal frame that was bolted to the wall, and on it was nothing but a thin, lumpy mattress which by now was soaked just as wet as Henry's clothes were.

The room outside the cell wasn't exactly equipped much better. It was barely bigger than the cell itself, and aside from the light bulb and the door, the only other noticeable features were a chair standing by the door, and a sink against one wall with a hose coiled up beneath it. Nothing else.

Henry went over towards the metal door that was the only way out of his cell. He could stick his arm out between the bars, but whoever had constructed his cell had been clever. No matter how much he stretched his arms, he couldn't reach the locks which were located in the middle of the door. So even if he had had a tool of sorts, jimmying the lock would be out of the question.

Henry started pacing the cell in frustration. This just didn't make sense. Why would somebody go all those lengths of kidnapping him at sea and constructing this cell? He didn't have any enemies that he knew of, it just didn't make sense.

Pacing didn't bring any form of relief, so Henry started shaking each of the metal bars that closed off his cell in turn. One of them might be loose, there might be a way to get out of this cell for him. But none of the bars moved even the fragment of an inch. But still Henry continued to shake them, trying to tear them loose to get out.

He only stopped when there were sounds coming from behind the door. Henry couldn't quite place those sounds, and a moment later the door opened and a man came into the basement. Fore a few seconds Henry could see another room behind the door, a room with a lot of shelves which seemed to be an expansion of this basement room. But then the door closed and Henry's attention was focussed solely on the man who had come into the room.

"I wouldn't bother shaking those bars, Henry. I've worked in construction for over twenty years, I know how to fix a metal bar so that it can't be torn out."

Henry took his hand off the bar and glared at the man, but he registered the words. The man had come down nearly immediately after he had woken up. And he had known that Henry was trying out the bars without seeing it. There had to be a camera here somewhere. But that was not the most important thing for now. "Who are you?", he brought out, surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded.

Slowly, the man stepped into the light of the single bulb. Henry just stared at the man, not daring to believe what he was seeing. It had been many years, but still he recognised the man. He just couldn't believe it.

"Sinclair?", he rasped out after a few minutes. "Harold Sinclair?"

"Nice to know that you haven't forgotten me, Henry. But I think it's the least I can expect, after what you did to my son."

Henry shook his head in disbelief. "This is still about what happened when your son was arrested? Listen, you kid shot a man in cold blood because he wanted to rip him off in a drug deal. He confessed to it. I was there!"

"Dylan would never have done that! He was a good boy!"

"With a juvenile record and a rap sheet for violent crimes. He was selling drugs, for crying out loud!"

Sinclair started pacing the room, shaking his head. "No. Dylan didn't do that. He was framed. It was an undercover operation gone bad, and you cops were trying to hush it up! And to top it off, you forced him to sign a fake confession!"

Henry sank back down on the narrow bunk. "There was a lawyer present during the interrogation. A lawyer your son called himself. There was nothing hinky about his confession."

Sinclair laughed. "It's to be admired that you're still keeping up the party line, Henry. But I've known the truth for a long time already. I don't know how you made my son confess, but you are going to pay for it. He was all that I had. And after you and your police buddies brainwashed him, he didn't even want to see me anymore! I went to visit him in prison after his verdict, and he sent me away! He told me he had confessed and that the confession had been the truth. What did you do to him?"

"I did nothing, Sinclair! Nothing, don't you get that? I arrested him, I read him his rights, I booked him, I waited until his lawyer arrived and then I interrogated him. That's all. You're completely mad!"

Sinclair laughed again, and it wasn't the laugh of a sane person. "That's what they said, too. Do you know what happened to my son in prison? Do you know what kind of people he got into contact with there?"

"My guess would be other criminals. That's the kind of people you find inside a prison."

"He died in there!", Sinclair yelled. "He might have hung himself six years ago, but he died so much earlier! The moment those doors closed behind him he was doomed, because he knew too much. He knew that he was innocent. Those years in prison drove him mad until he saw no other way out but to hang himself with a bed sheet! And it's all your fault!"  
Henry knew it wasn't, but it wouldn't have helped much to point that out now. It didn't seem as if rational arguments would get him really far with the man right now. Besides, Sinclair seemed to have talked himself into a rant, so no matter what Henry said right now would be lost anyway.

"You're going to pay for what you've done to my son, do you understand?"

When Henry didn't answer, Sinclair stepped closer to the bars. "I said do you understand? I'm going to make you pay! Let me give you a little update, right? Around nine o'clock this morning, a fisher found your boat. By now the police and the Coast Guard are looking for you everywhere. They're even interviewing all other people who were out on the ocean they can get a hold of. My interview was actually kind of fun. I offered any kind of help I could give, but the police merely said they're going to deal with it on their own. If they don't find you within twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours, they're going to stop the search. Call off the boats, diverse the manpower to more important cases. You'll be declared dead within a week. And while all that is happening outside, in the real world, I'm going to give you a taste of what my boy went through because of you."

Henry carefully watched as Sinclair absent-mindedly stepped closer and closer to the metal bars of his cell during his rant. He didn't move, didn't dare to shake Sinclair out of his stupor by a wrong movement. But Sinclair didn't even notice that Henry was there anymore.

Just another step.

Just one more step.

And then Sinclair took another step towards the bars and Henry made a lunge for him. He got a hold of Sinclair's sleeve, and with both feet stemmed firmly into the ground Henry put his whole weight into pulling Sinclair against the bars.

The next thing he knew, agonising pain coursed through his veins with every heartbeat. Distantly, he heard a voice scream, but only later realised that it had been his own voice. As the pain gradually ebbed away again, Henry found himself lying on the floor of his cell, feeling numb and in pain at the same time, heart beating fast in his chest. There was the sound of a lock disengaging and steps approached him, but still Henry found it hard to control the movements of his body. He couldn't move, he couldn't get up. Stun gun, he thought. Sinclair had a stun gun.

"Do you think I'm stupid?", Sinclair yelled and a moment later a boot connected painfully with Henry's ribcage. Black and white stars exploded in front of Henry's eyes and he found he could no longer breathe.

"Do you really think I'd fall for that?"

Another kick, in the same place, and Henry felt at least one of his ribs give. Pain flared up his side and he tried to curl up into a ball to protect his ribs, but Sinclair didn't give him a chance. Sinclair had a lot of aggression pent up, and his vent at this moment was Henry. He tried to ride it out, tried to ignore the pain, but it was useless. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of agony, one particularly vicious kick threw him forward, his head connected with one of the metal bars and everything went black.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

The worst part was that he had no idea how much time passed. Sinclair had taken his watch away, and as Henry slowly regained consciousness after Sinclair had knocked him out, he didn't know for how long he had been out cold.

There was no daylight that could tell him the passage of time, and the one light bulb kept the room constantly dimly illuminated, no matter if it was day or night. The only way Henry could mark the passage of time was by Sinclair's visits, even though he had no idea whether those occurred daily or more often. He tried to keep track of the clothes Sinclair wore to his visits, but it was getting difficult.

Sinclair never made the mistake of getting too close to the bars without preparation. Henry tried to catch him by surprise again and again, but all his attempts failed. And Sinclair always had his stun-gun ready and didn't hesitate to use it.

Sinclair never made the mistake of opening up the door to Henry's cell, either. Not before he hadn't used the stun gun on Henry and had rendered him temporarily unable to move. The device was set to its highest setting, and no matter what Henry tried, he cell didn't provide him with enough room to escape Sinclair for long.

And Henry's condition was deteriorating. That vicious beating Sinclair had given him that first day had left some damage. His left eye was swollen shut and he had bruises everywhere, but worst was his left side. Henry was fairly sure that at least one rib was broken, it hurt fiercely to draw a deep breath. And Henry was fairly sure that he was getting sick. His head hadn't stopped aching once since he had woken up in this cell for the first time, though that was probably still the leftover pain from hitting his head on the boat, his sinuses were blocked and a few hours ago the coughing had started. It hurt fiercely to cough with a rib that was cracked at the very least, if not broken, but there was nothing Henry could do to stop it. And from the feel of it, he was sure that he started running a fever.

By now he barely had the strength to get up from the small bunk bed on which he lay curled up and shivering. There was no blanket, and the basement was anything but warm, especially since he had arrived here in sopping wet clothes. He hadn't had anything to eat since he had been brought here, and what was worse, he had barely had any water, either. One time Sinclair had rolled a bottle of water through the metal bars; and during his last visit, when Henry hadn't immediately woken up upon Sinclair's entry into the room, Henry had gotten to know what the hose was there for. He had woken up gasping and sputtering, putting only additional stress on his bad left side as he rolled off the bunk bed to escape the spray of icy water, and his clothes and the mattress were now sopping wet again.

His whole body was aching, and as he lay there and stared at ahead into the empty room ahead of him, it hit him with a sudden clarity. He was going to die here. Sinclair didn't intend to keep him alive in the long run, he only wanted him to stay alive long enough so that he could suffer.

And what was worse was that nobody knew where he was. If Sinclair was right and his empty boat had been found, then nobody would think of suspecting foul play. Not even Shawn. Not that Shawn was going to go searching for him, anyway, not after how they had parted. Most probably, Shawn wasn't even back in Santa Barbara yet, but was spending the weekend in Mexico or Las Vegas. And even if he was back, Shawn wouldn't be searching for him.

Henry's musings were interrupted by the scraping sound that always preceded the opening of the door. He didn't bother to get up from his bunk though, he didn't have the energy left for that.

The door opened and Sinclair stepped into the room. He carefully closed the door behind himself, pulled the chair closer to the metal bars and sat down. Henry watched him, and he didn't like the smug grin on the man's face.

"Not feeling too hot, are you?" Sinclair's grin grew wider. "I can't help it, you seemed totally parched in there. I'd be a bad host if I didn't give you at least some water. Not my fault that your immune system is acting up a little."

Henry didn't answer, and had it not been for his aching ribs, he'd have turned his back to Sinclair. Instead he closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling.

"You won't guess who I met today."

"Not interested", Henry said, but immediately stopped as his hoarse throat forced him to cough. Holding his left side with both hands, Henry hacked and coughed until the spell was over, then he sank back onto the mattress, breathing heavily, the pain in his left side so bad that it nearly made him pass out.

Sinclair acted as if he hadn't even heard the deep and rattling coughs. "Oh, but I thought you might be. Your son is an interesting character."

Henry turned around and struggled to sit up despite the pain.

"Stay away from my son, you bastard."

Sinclair laughed. "I had to pay my condolences, Henry. I'm sure you'll understand. Though I have to admit that he didn't exactly seem to be drowning in grief. On the contrary, he seemed very composed for somebody who had just lost his father."

The words hit Henry like another blow to the guts. The logical part of his brain knew that he shouldn't believe a word Sinclair was saying, but emotionally it was another matter entirely. He knew that his relationship with his son was difficult to the point of dysfunctional, but he had always thought that deep down, there was something more. Something they just couldn't show to each other, because they were too similar and yet far too different to ever get along. But then why was it so easy to imagine Shawn being totally untouched, going on with his life despite the fact that Henry was officially considered dead?

Sinclair was watching Henry like a bird of prey would watch the mouse the moment before it struck.

"I even invited him out for a beer. You really should have taught Shawn not to open up that much to strangers, Henry. I'll wait another day or so, then I'm going to pay him another visit. Who knows, if you hold out long enough you can witness the budding friendship between your son and me."

With a roar of rage Henry gathered enough energy to get up from the bunk and pull himself up on the metal bars. He had to cling to them tightly because his knees were weak, but he didn't care.

"You will stay away from my son, you bastard! Do you hear me? Stay away from Shawn, or I swear I'm going to…"

"You're going to do what? Yell at me? Oh, I'm scared. A little newsflash, Henry. You're officially considered dead out there. Which practically gives me carte blanche. Nobody is suspecting me of anything, and that means I can do whatever I want. If I want to invite your son out for a beer, I can do it. If I want to push myself into his life, I can do it. If I want to hurt him, I can do it. And you know what the best part about it is? There's not a fucking thing you can do to stop me. You can barely stand on your own two feet, what makes you think you can protect your son from anything? You stopped me from protecting my son, you took my son away from me. And I don't yet know for how much longer you're going to survive down here, but I can already tell you one thing: you will die knowing that one day I am going to get to your son, one day I'm going to kill him just like you killed mine, and there isn't a single thing you can do to stop me."

Henry's whole body was shaking as he clung to the metal bars of his cell and struggled to stay upright. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let that bastard get to Shawn like he had gotten to him. But Sinclair was right in one thing – there was nothing Henry could do. He couldn't protect his son, his son who thought he was dead and who didn't care about it in the least. But Shawn remained his son and it would always be Henry's task to watch out for him, but he had failed him. He had failed him in everything that counted, and now he was going to die down here and nobody would ever know. Shawn would never know.

Henry let go of the metal bars and sank down onto the floor in front of the bunk. It was over. He didn't even have the strength left to remain standing upright, and it wouldn't take long before the injuries he had been dealt over the past days would kill him. Not immediately, that would have been too much of a mercy, but at one point Sinclair would hurt him bad enough to kill him. That, or he would starve, or get pneumonia and die.

Henry distantly heard the door to his cell being unlocked, but he couldn't bother to care. He had tried to overwhelm Sinclair before, more than once, but he had never succeeded. And now he was feverish, injured and all the fight had gone out of him. He had no chance of getting out of here alive.

"What's that, no attempt to fight back this time?", Sinclair asked as he roughly pushed Henry with his foot. "That takes all the fun out of it. I just hope once it comes to it, Shawn is going to have a little more spirit in him."

At those words, Henry saw red.

The pain in his ribs didn't matter, the dizzy feeling in his head didn't matter, the fever didn't matter. Nothing mattered but that this man wouldn't lay a hand on Shawn, not for as long as Henry was still drawing breath.

He didn't know where all the energy suddenly came from, he was tapping into reserves that should actually have been depleted long ago, but he managed to get up to his knees and throw himself at Sinclair. He managed to pull Sinclair down, his fist connected with the man's jaw and for a moment, for the glorious fragment of a moment, Henry thought that there had been enough strength behind his punch to knock the other man unconscious.

But then he felt the by now well-known feeling of the stun-gun being pressed against his arm, and a second later the electric shock jolted through his body. He felt how his head hit something hard, and his last conscious thought was that this time he might not have enough reserves left to wake up again. Before everything turned black Henry sent out a fervent prayer, despite the fact that he had never been a religious man. But just as darkness crept into the edges of his vision he prayed with all his might that Sinclair would never lay a hand on Shawn, then he gave in to the darkness.

Sinclair took a step back as Henry's body suddenly went limp. For a few seconds he stared down at the body in front of him and watched the small pool of blood that had begun forming beneath Henry's head grow. He had hoped for a few more days with the older Spencer, a few more days to let him pay for what Dylan had suffered in prison for more than twelve years, but it seemed that he wouldn't get it. Well, there still was one Spencer left.

With a grin he left the cell and locked the door behind himself.


	10. A Whole new Level of Fear

**Chapter 10 – A Whole New Level of Fear**

For what felt like hours, Shawn stood and stared at the image in front of him. In fact it might only have been a few seconds, but it was enough. More than enough. What he saw burned itself into his brain with a frightening intensity, threatening to haunt his nightmares for days and weeks to come.

The separate part of the basement wasn't much bigger than an average room, and a very small portion of it had been separated yet again from the rest by sturdy looking metal bars that were anchored firmly in the floor and the ceiling. There was a bunk bed in one corner of the cell. And beside that bunk, his father was lying on the dirty stone floor.

Shawn didn't know what to think. He didn't know what to feel. Right now, he didn't know anything. First his father had been alive and yelling, then he had been dead, and now he wasn't dead anymore. Or maybe he was dead despite it all. Normally, Shawn's mind was always busy with something. But right now, he was drawing a total blank thought-wise. It was as if somebody had reformatted his mental hard-drive and now the system wasn't booting.

There was blood, that's what Shawn saw first. Blood on the floor, and on Henry's clothes. The shirt his father was wearing had once been a light blue. One of his lucky fishing shirts. Shawn didn't know where the thought came from, but it was there, and somehow it seemed important. It had to mean that his father had been wrong. If this had truly been a lucky shirt, none of this would have happened. It couldn't be a lucky shirt, by no standards.

But now the shirt was no longer light blue, anyway. It was dirty, grimy and stained with dirt and blood, both in liberal amounts.

Henry wasn't moving. There was no perceptible movement, not even the slow rise and fall of his chest that Shawn could see, but maybe he missed it because he was shaking so badly.

Henry wasn't moving, and neither was Shawn, because all he could do was stand there and stare and think how _wrong_ this image was. His father didn't belong in a cell, his whole life had been about being on the other side of the bars, but now this psycho had reversed that and everything was just _so_ wrong.

Shawn stared at the image, unable to tear his eyes away. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds though, because neither Lassiter nor O'Hara had moved either.

Shawn was the first to tear himself out of the momentary stupor that had befallen all three people in the room.

"Dad!"

He barely recognised his own voice as he ran over towards the cell and fell to his knees. His father was on the other side of the bars, lying motionlessly on his back. There was a pool of congealed blood beneath Henry's head, his eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.

"Dad!", Shawn yelled again. He tried to stretch his arm through the metal bars to reach his father, to touch him and at least know that he was still alive, but no matter how much he stretched, he couldn't reach him. Short of dislocating his shoulder Shawn had no chance of reaching his father. Quickly, Shawn got to his feet and hurried over towards the solid metal door that closed off the cell. It was secured by two locks, and no amount of shaking and rattling at the door was moving it just an inch.

"Let me, Spencer."

Lassiter pushed past him and pulled out Sinclair's keychain. Shawn immediately fell to his knees beside the cell again and stretched his arm through the bars. He still couldn't reach his father, and what was even more worrying was that Henry hadn't moved a bit or had shown the slightest sign of awareness, despite all the ruckus their arrival had caused.

"Dad, come on! Wake up!"

Lassiter was meanwhile working on getting the cell door open, but there were far too many keys on Sinclair's keychain and he had to try them out one by one.

Juliet knelt down beside Shawn.

"He doesn't answer?"

Shawn shook his head and tried to stretch his arm even father through the bars. The cell was narrow, but his father was lying directly against the opposite wall.

"No, he doesn't. I don't even see if he's still breathing. And I just can't reach him. Get the damn door open, Lassiter!"

If Lassiter heard the undertone of pure terror in Shawn's voice, he didn't let it on. "I'm working on it, Spencer. O'Hara, make sure EMTs are here as soon as possible!"

Juliet got up and pulled out her radio, just as Lassiter finally found the key and opened the padlock. Shawn immediately got to his feet and physically shoved Lassiter out of the way as soon as the door was open.

"Dad!" He knelt down next to his father's prone form and put a hand against his father's throat, searching for a pulse. A sob escaped his lips as he felt his father's heartbeat flutter weakly against his fingertips. And now he could also see that his Dad was breathing, albeit very flatly an rapidly, every breath accompanied by a soft wheezing.

Lassiter crouched down beside him. "How is he?"

"He's burning up", Shawn rasped.

It was no small wonder, his father seemed in an overall horrible condition. There were numerous swellings, cuts and bruises all over his body, one eye was swollen shut, a cut above his left eye looked as if it had gotten infected, and there was definitely something off about his breathing. His whole body was radiating heat and he was completely unresponsive. But for now he was alive.

Lassiter pressed a hand against Henry's cheek and immediately withdrew it. "O'Hara, we need those EMTs in here right now!"

"On their way, it'll be just a minute."

"Tell them to hurry!", Shawn snapped. He thought his father had already spent far too much time without medical assistance. One hand on Henry's far too hot cheek, Shawn gently slapped the other.

"Come on Dad, don't do this. I need you to wake up now, all right?"

But Henry didn't react. The only obvious sign that he was alive at all were the strange wheezing sounds that accompanied each breath he drew. The sounds scared Shawn. They weren't natural, they mean that something was seriously wrong, something that might not be fixable if those damned medics didn't come here soon. Suddenly Lassiter returned to the cell, though Shawn hadn't even noticed that the detective had left. Without saying a word, Lassiter reached for Henry's shirt and tore it open.

"What are you doing?", Shawn said, his voice raised.

"You said yourself that he's burning up. I'm just trying to get his fever down."

Only now did Shawn notice that Lassiter had taken off his suit jacket and was holding it in his hand, now dripping wet. He began wringing the jacket out over Henry's chest, stomach and arms, then covered him with the wet fabric and used one of the sleeves to wipe over Henry's head.

"O'Hara!", Lassiter impatiently called over his shoulder.

"EMTs are here!", Juliet's voice replied.

The two medics entered the cell a few moments later, and Lassiter got up to make space for them to work. Shawn remained where he was, but a few moments later a hand fell on his shoulder.

"Give them some room to work, Spencer."

Shawn didn't want to move. He knew that the EMTs were only trying to help his father, and that he was actually even in their way if he remained where he was, but it was as if an inner barrier stopped him from moving. Moving meant leaving his father, and he couldn't do that.

"Spencer!"

Lassiter pulled Shawn up by the arm, non too gently, and while he really didn't want to get up and leave his father in the hands of strangers, Shawn didn't have the energy left to fight the detective. Numbly, he watched as the two medics started to work, but though he watched as they fixed an oxygen mask over Henry's face, stuck an IV-needle into his arm and did all kind of other things, Shawn didn't really notice all these things.

All he saw was his father's bruised and battered face, the left eye that was swollen shut, the long cut on his forehead which had become red and inflamed, the stubble on his face that came from nearly a week of not shaving, his one good eye that was closed with not even a flick of the lid despite all the jostling and pushing that was happening to him. It was all so wrong. Just a few hours ago, Shawn had been convinced he'd never see his father again, had been convinced he'd never see his father's face again. Now he did, and he should be glad about it. Glad and grateful. But somehow it just all felt so wrong.

After a few minutes of hurried treatment, the EMTs loaded Henry onto a gurney.

"Where are you taking him?", Lassiter's voice asked from somewhere beyond the mist that was clouding Shawn's perception.

"St. Agnes' Community Hospital. It's closest", one of the medics replied, voice clipped and his attention fixed entirely on Henry. Without another word, the two men started rolling the gurney out of the basement. Shawn just stood there and stared after them even long after the medics had rolled the gurney out of sight.

"Come on Spencer, I'll give you a ride to the hospital."

Shawn nodded numbly, but he only moved when Lassiter reached for his sleeve and pulled him out of the cell. The mist didn't ease entirely, but now that he could no longer stare down at his father's face and ignore everything else, reality came a little more into focus. By now the basement was swarmed with cops and the first teams from forensics starting to gather evidence.

Juliet was standing next to the door, giving instructions to two uniformed officers about where to start with their task of securing the scene, and Shawn was surprised to see Gus standing next to her. Gus had been waiting out by the car, hadn't he? When had he come down here? Gus caught his eye as Lassiter led Shawn into the direction of the door.

"Shawn?"

Shawn stopped and looked at his friend. He didn't know if Gus had asked his name as a question. Could you do that? Could a name be said in a way that it was a question, and if so, what could possibly be the answer?

"Gus."

Gus looked at Shawn insecurely, his eyes darting from his face down to his clothes. There was something uncomfortable in his gaze, and as Shawn followed Gus' eyes he noticed the bloodstains on his knees. Shawn hadn't even noticed that he had knelt in his father's blood.

"It's…Dad, he must have hit his head." He shrugged helplessly. "He didn't wake up. And there was something wrong about his breathing."

Gus put a hand on Shawn's shoulder, but Shawn immediately shook it off. Gus stared at his friend for a moment, as if trying to place that behaviour according to previous experience. His facial expression suggested that he didn't quite like what he found.

"Shawn, they're bringing him to the hospital now. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"He was burning up. That can't be normal."

"Come on, let's go to the hospital. They'll be able to tell us more."

Shawn nodded numbly. "Right. The hospital."

If he only focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, it wasn't all that difficult. Just one foot in front of the other, and in no time he was out of the basement, out of that horrible house and in the back of some car. Whose, he couldn't tell. In fact, he didn't even notice who was driving. All he knew was that he was in a car and that it was moving towards the hospital, and that he didn't want to go there. Anywhere but there.

It wasn't fair. Facing the news that your father had died was bad enough. Screw the natural order of things, that situation alone wasn't fair. But Shawn had stood it. With denial and anger and tears and shouting, but he had dealt with it. In his own way, which had mostly included pushing the pain aside, but he had. And just as he had started to get used to this gigantic change in his life, suddenly there had been hope. Shawn had never known what a crushing feeling hope could be, but it had been. Just as all the emotional waves had settled, the discovery that Larry Norton wasn't who he said he was had churned up again all those feelings Shawn hadn't wanted to deal with in the first place.

And now he was on his way to the hospital where in all likelihood he would be told that his father had died after those EMTs had wheeled him out of Shawn's sight. Because that was the only possibility there was, right?

_What Shawn, did you develop some hope? You really shouldn't have. Oops, sorry about that. But you've been it that before__, you know the feeling. It really shouldn't be that hard anymore to deal with your father's death the second time around._

But Shawn knew for a fact that he wouldn't be able to deal with it. He hadn't really dealt with it the first time around, just pushed it into a distant corner of his mind where it hadn't hurt as much. He knew that he couldn't go through that again.

But it was out of his hands now. He was sitting in a car, and that car was driving towards the hospital, and once he arrived there, there'd be no escaping it anymore.

Shawn put his head against the cool glass of the window and closed his eyes.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Gus was worried about Shawn. Having been Shawn Spencer's friend for way over two decades had somewhat accustomed him to that feeling in everyday life. But this was different. This was way out of any league Gus thought he was able to play in.

The look in Shawn's eyes down in that basement had plain scared Gus. He had never seen his friend look like that or act like that before. Well, that wasn't entirely true, but Gus still hoped this wasn't going to be as bad as the last time had been when something had thrown Shawn that much off track emotionally.

After Henry had been brought out of the basement, Shawn had seemed to deflate. He was moving as if on autopilot, answering questions monosyllabically, following Gus wordlessly to the car that would bring them to the hospital. Gus watched his friend for the entire drive, getting more worried by the minute. If there was one clear sign that something was wrong with Shawn, then it was silence. And this was worse than just merely silence. And it wasn't the kind of silence which meant that Shawn was busy thinking something through, cocking up a new scheme. It was the kind of silence which said that Shawn's brain was in neutral, running empty because it had shut down after emotional overload.

The drive had taken an endless twenty minutes, then Buzz had stopped in front of the hospital and Shawn and Gus had been led into the waiting room.

And that's where they had spent the past one and a half hours, waiting for news on Henry's condition. Gus was sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, flipping through a magazine for the fifteenth time when he hadn't even taken a single look at any pictures or articles the first fourteen times around. Lassiter was pacing up and down at one end of the room, his third cup of the acid coming out of the coffee machine down the corridor in his hand. Juliet had left a few minutes earlier to go outside and brief Chief Vick on the lack of news so far. And Shawn was sitting on a chair apart from the others, hands lying limp in his lap, staring down at the sickly grey linoleum floor. He hadn't moved perceptibly ever since he had sat down one and a half hour earlier.

Just as Gus was starting to flip through the magazine for a sixteenth time, there were steps coming into the waiting room. He put the magazine down to see Juliet come walking back into the room. On the other end of the room, Lassiter stopped his pacing.

"Anything new from the Chief?"

"Sinclair's being arraigned first thing tomorrow morning. The Chief started interrogating him, but his lawyer's pressing for a psych-evaluation first. She asked to inform her immediately should there be any news about Mr. Spencer. The whole station wants to know."

Lassiter resumed his pacing with a nod, but Shawn didn't even move. Juliet took a step over towards him, but Gus held her back by her wrist. She turned back to him with both eyebrows raised.

"What?"

"What are you doing, Juliet?"

"I was going to sit with Shawn."

Gus pulled her into the chair beside him.

"You don't want to do that."

Juliet frowned. "Yes, I do. He's been sitting there all on his own for the entire wait. And I can't even imagine what he's going through right now."

Gus nodded. "Exactly. You don't know what's going on inside of him right now."

"Do you?"

Gus closed his eyes and shook his head. "No. But I know that you don't want to approach when he's like this."

"Why?"

"Because if you're lucky, he's going to ignore you anyway. If you're not lucky, you're going to discover that Shawn inherited some of his father's temper. So either way, you're better off leaving him on his own right now. Whatever is going on in his head right now, he'd let us know if he wanted company."

Juliet looked at Gus for a long moment. "You've seen him like this before?"

Gus nodded. "Yeah, back when his Mom left. It lasted for about four weeks during which you'd never knew when he'd ignore you and when he'd snap at you for no reason."

Juliet shook her head. "But there has to be something we can do for him."

"Until that doctor comes out with news, I don't think there's much we can do. Shawn has his own way of dealing with things."

Juliet gave a mirthless laugh. "I thought that if there was one person I know who's always wearing his heart on his sleeve, it's Shawn."

"Yes. But things between him and his Dad are in a different category altogether. He's keeping that one so bottled up inside that most of the time, Shawn himself doesn't know what he's feeling."

"So what do we do now?", Juliet asked.

"We wait. And once the doctor comes out, we'll deal with whatever news he'll have."

Juliet shifted in her chair impatiently. "I want to do more for him."

"I know." Gus sighed. "I know. But for now, we'll just have to wait."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Though it looked as if Shawn was in another world with his thoughts entirely, he was actually acutely aware of everything that was going on around him. He was aware of the other people here in the waiting room with him, aware of Lassiter pacing, of Gus turning pages in that stupid magazine, of Juliet and Gus talking.

But he tuned it all out. He was aware that it was all there, but he forced himself not to listen. He didn't want to listen, he didn't want to talk, he didn't want to think. Which was awfully hard because thinking was a constant process, it was what he had been raised to do continuously. Thinking. Analysing. But right now he didn't want to, so he forced himself to stare down at the spotted linoleum floor and keep his mind a blank.

And he waited. He waited for that one moment when the door to his right would open. He waited for the steps to approach and for the voice to call out.

"Family of Henry Spencer?"

For the first time in nearly two hours, Shawn raised his head. He drew a deep breath, got up from his chair and walked over towards the doctor who had just stepped into the waiting room.

"What about my father?"

The doctor looked at him and stretched out his hand. "I'm Enrique Martinez, I've been treating your father."

Shawn shook the offered hand, still staring into the doctor's eyes without saying a word. Martinez released the hand and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"I'll be frank with you, Mr. Spencer. Your father's condition had us worried very much when he arrived here. He was running a high-grade fever, and obviously had been running that fever for more than a day. It's one of those cases in which help really came in the nick of time, shortly after your father was brought here his fever spiked. We call that hyperpyrexia, his fever went up above the limit a human organism can handle. We had to shock-cool him to get it down, but the most important thing is that we managed and now his temperature is stable at around 103°F. I'm confident that within the next twelve hours we'll bring it down further."

"That can't be all", Shawn croaked out. It couldn't be all after what he had seen in that basement.

Martinez sighed. "No, that was only the acute danger. What happened to your father is the following. Some of the wounds your father sustained got infected. He started developing a light fever, which is a totally normal reaction, but since his condition went untreated, and since his body went without the appropriate amount of nourishment and even more importantly water for days, that infection spread. The fever rose, the bacteria spread through his body. They settled in his lungs and he developed pneumonia. That on its own is bad enough, but your father also sustained one broken and one cracked rib on his left side. We set those, but the broken rib bruised the lung, so we need to keep an eye out on that. In his momentary condition, I don't want to put him through surgery, but if we discover any internal bleeding we might have to operate."

Martinez shook his head and looked at Shawn. "I'm sorry, it's easy to get lost in all those medical terms. Right now, your father's condition is critical, but stable. What we're doing is that we keep your father on strong antibiotics against the infection and the pneumonia. We need to avoid him going into septic shock, and right now it looks good. Else he's on medication against the fever, and just to make sure we're giving him additional oxygen to relieve his lungs a little. We're re-hydrating him via IV and we're monitoring all his vital functions closely. Some definite results we'll only be able to see within the next twenty-four hours, but for now the most important thing is that he's reacting to the medication and the treatment. That's a good sign, Mr. Spencer."

Shawn nodded slowly. "I want to see him."

Martinez nodded. "Of course. But only one visitor at a time."

For the first time, Shawn turned around towards the other people in the waiting room.

"We need to get to the station, anyway", Lassiter said. "Doctor, I'm going to need your report for the file."

Martinez nodded. "Of course, I'll send it over."

Lassiter nodded at Shawn and left the waiting room. Juliet stepped up to Shawn. "Call if you need anything, all right?" She put her hand on his arm for a moment, then she turned and followed her partner out of the room. Shawn looked at Gus.

"I'm going to get some things for your Dad and you. Just give me your keys."

"Thanks Gus", Shawn said as he handed the keys over.

"No need to thank me. Now go and sit with your Dad."

Gus vanished, and Shawn followed doctor Martinez through a maze of corridors until they arrived at room 1105. Martinez opened the door for Shawn and let him in.

"We're still monitoring your father closely, but don't let all that equipment shock you. He's sleeping now, and he'll probably be asleep for a while longer. Just ring for a nurse if there's anything you need."

"Thanks", Shawn mumbled, and Martinez left. Slowly, Shawn stepped up to the bed and pulled the one visitor's chair closer. His father was still looking pale and feverish, but now that his wounds had been cleaned and dressed with bandages, looking into his face was less of a shocking experience. Of course there was the swollen eye, and there was the oxygen mask over his father's nose and mouth, but still. He was looking more asleep than dead now, that was a start.

And he was no longer wheezing with every breath he took.

Shawn settled in the chair next to his Dad's bed and simply looked at his father.

Critical but stable. Wasn't that an oxymoron? How could somebody's condition be critical and stable at the same time? Shawn didn't know. Right now, all he knew that somehow, his father was still alive. Everybody had been wrong, his father wasn't dead. That was all he could think about. His Dad was still alive. If he just clung to that thought, then maybe he'd get out of this whole situation with his sanity intact. His Dad was still alive, and that was all that counted. Now his fever needed to go down and he needed to wake up, and Shawn intended to stay here until exactly that happened.

Some beads of sweat had appeared on his father's forehead, one of the many physical signs that not all was well, at least not yet. Shawn reached for a tissue from the nightstand and wiped the sweat away. His father's skin was still too warm to the touch, and with some worry Shawn watched the IV-drips that were pouring the necessary medication into his father's body. Hadn't Martinez said they had gotten the fever down? Henry's skin still felt far too warm for Shawn's liking.

The box of tissues within reach, Shawn tried to get comfortable in the chair and settled for the wait. It was going to be a long night.


	11. Antiseptic Nightmare

**Chapter 10 ****– Antiseptic Nightmare**

_"I'm sorry, Mr. Spencer. I've got the results of your father's latest ultrasound examination. The broken rib caused more damage than we initially anticipated. There's a source of internal bleeding, and we need to operate."_

_"Didn't you say yesterday that he's in no condition to undergo surgery?"_

_"His condition doesn't advise it, no. The pneumonia has lowered his blood pressure, and his infection still hasn't receded as much as I'd like. But we don't really have a choice about that right now, not with the internal bleeding."_

_"All right."_

_"You will need to sign the paperwork. Your father's records state that you have power of attorney for his medical decisions."_

_"Who, __**me**__?"_

_"Yes Mr. Spencer, you. I'm going to get a paperwork, and a nurse will come in a few minutes to prep your father for surgery."_

And that was how Shawn had ended up in the hospital waiting room for the second time within twenty-four hours. Gus had arrived a few minutes after Henry had been wheeled away for the operation, and now he was sitting next to Shawn on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs and waited.

Again, Shawn didn't say a word as they sat there, and this time Gus didn't even bother to pretend reading a magazine. He also didn't try to tell his friend anything about getting something to eat, or go home and sleep. Shawn looked as if he was in desperate need of both, but Gus knew that he wouldn't go and get either before Henry was out of surgery again. At least Shawn had changed out of his blood-soaked jeans by now and was wearing a pair of tan slacks which Gus had gotten from his apartment earlier.

But as soon as Henry was out of surgery and settled back in his room, Gus would make sure that his friend got some rest. And something to eat. Maybe not in that particular order, but he'd make sure of it.

And Henry had better be all right real quick after the operation, otherwise he'd have to answer to Gus. What Shawn needed right now was some sort of emotional stability, like knowing that his father was going to be fine again. Gus didn't even want to imagine what Shawn had to feel like after the past three days. First the fight with his father, then the news that he was dead, then the hope that maybe he wasn't, only to find him near dead in that basement, then being told that he was on his way to getting better and now this. If it was a rollercoaster ride, it had long passed the point where Shawn still knew which way was up and which way was down.

He checked his watch. Two hours ten minutes since Henry had been taken to the operation. Gus got up from his chair.

"I'm going to the cafeteria. Anything I can get you?"

Shawn shook his head. "No thanks."

"Let me rephrase that. I'm going to the cafeteria, and I'm going to get you something to eat. So, do you want a sandwich or anything else?"

Shawn sighed. "Sandwich is fine."

"Good."

But just as Gus turned to leave, the doors to the OR-area opened and Henry's surgeon came out. Gus stopped in his tracks and immediately went back to Shawn's side. His friend had gotten up from his chair upon the doctor's approach, and anybody who didn't know Shawn as well as Gus wouldn't have noticed the tension in his stance or the slight trembling of his hands. Gus tried to read something from the surgeon's expression, any notion that would prepare them for the doctor's words, but his expression was perfectly unreadable.

Gus drew a deep breath and braced himself. If the news was bad, he needed to keep his act together for Shawn.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Death was an interesting experience. Not being a religious person, Henry Spencer had never really considered concepts like heaven, hell, or life after death in general, so this was an interesting and unbiased firsthand experience. Now, Henry couldn't remember why exactly he was so convinced that he was dead, but the notion was so firmly embedded in his subconscious that he didn't doubt it. He was dead.

And death was obviously warm, dark, and smelled slightly of antiseptic.

That, and something was beeping in a faint rhythm somewhere in the background.

Slowly Henry opened first one eye, then the other, and tried to figure out what was going on. It took a moment for his eyes to be able to focus on anything, but as soon as he saw somewhat more clearly, he frowned.

He was fairly sure that there weren't any hospitals in afterlife.

It contradicted the entire concept of being physically dead, anyway. So something had to be wrong about his conviction of being dead.

All right, he needed to figure out what had happened to bring him here. He thought for a moment. The memories were fuzzy, but they came quickly.

His boat, the cell in the basement, Harold Sinclair.

Sinclair!

Henry's heart started beating fast in his chest, and from somewhere in the distance the faint beeping sound sped up. Sinclair had threatened to get to Shawn, and if Henry had for some reason which he couldn't yet understand come out of that basement alive, he needed to warn his son.

"Shawn."

Something was wrong with his voice, it came out all muffled and wrong. But there was movement in the room, and a moment later somebody bent over his bed. At first it was only a blurry brown blob, but after a bit of blinking Gus' face came into focus.

"Mr. Spencer?"

"Gus."

Again, his voice didn't come out right, but Gus reached for his face and suddenly Henry realised that there was a mask covering the lower half of his face. Gus pulled off the oxygen mask, and finally Henry could speak. Well, it came out more like a whisper, but it served its purpose.

"Shawn. Sinclair…he'll go after Shawn. Gotta…warn…"

"It's all right, Mr. Spencer. Sinclair is in prison, and Shawn is fine."

Somehow, breathing was a lot easier after those words. "Where is he?"

Gus smiled and nudged his head towards the other side of the bed. With a lot of effort, Henry turned his head in the direction Gus indicated. Shawn was sitting on a chair beside the bed, arms crossed in front of his chest, head lolled to the side, fast asleep. Henry was shocked to see his son like that. Shawn was pale, the stubble on his face went way beyond his usual three to five-day stubble. He looked scruffy all over, his clothes were wrinkled, his hair was a mess, and the shadows underneath his eyes were so dark that they gave his face a skull-like appearance.

"Why's he here?", Henry forced out. "He looks exhausted."

"He refused to leave until you woke up."

Henry rolled his eyes. Typical of his son, that kind of stubbornness.

"Why are you here?"

"Me?", Gus shrugged. "I'm on Shawn-watch. Juliet, me and some others, we've been taking turns."

"Shawn-watch?" Worry rose inside of Henry, and the beeping of the heart monitor sped up again.

Gus nodded. "Yes. To make sure that he doesn't drive himself to total exhaustion. Force him to take breaks, to eat, to drink, to sleep. Though the last one doesn't seem to be a problem today."

"How long have I been out?"

Gus shrugged. "Shawn figured out where you were on Saturday afternoon, and you were found shortly afterwards. Now it's Tuesday morning. You had surgery on Sunday, and after that your condition worsened for a while. Shawn…it was hard on him. He pushed himself beyond what was good for him that day. Didn't eat, didn't drink, refused to leave your room. He nearly collapsed, so we started to check in on him. But it'll do him good to get a whole night's sleep sometime soon."

A worried frown had settled on Henry's face at Gus words.

"I'm awake now. He can go get some sleep."

Gus laughed. "Yeah, you try and tell him that. Meanwhile, I'm going to go call Chief Vick. Half the police of Santa Barbara is waiting for their daily update. It's good to see you awake again, Mr. Spencer."

He turned towards the door, but on his way made a small detour over towards Shawn's chair. Gently he shook his friend's shoulder. For a few seconds, Shawn didn't react, but then he began to shift around, mumbled and started to open his eyes at the same time.

"Whassup?", was the first halfway coherent word out of his mouth.

"I need to make some calls. There's somebody here who'd be glad for a little distraction in the meantime."

And before Shawn had even opened his eyes fully, Gus was already out of the room. Tiredly, Shawn looked after his friend, then he turned back towards the bed. And froze.

"Dad, you're awake!"  
"Yes, I am. You can go home now."

Shawn's face fell immediately. Henry had seen that reaction to something he said often before, but this one time he hadn't meant it the way Shawn had understood it. Henry closed his eyes and sighed.

"Shawn, Gus said you're exhausted. I can see that you're exhausted. You need sleep. I'll be all right."

Shawn shook his head. "I'm okay, Gus was exaggerating. You know him."  
"Yes, I know Gus. Which is why I want you to go home and get some sleep."

"Dad, I…"

"When was the last time you slept through a night, Shawn?"

Shawn rubbed his hands across his face and through his hair. "That's not important now, is it?"

"Yes, it is."

"No Dad, it isn't!"

"When Shawn?", Henry demanded in his best no-nonsense voice.

"Last Wednesday, all right?", Shawn yelled and got up from his chair. He started pacing in front of the window, his hands buried in his hair. "That is if you're not counting the one night when Gus drugged me without my knowledge. So what? I'm a little tired, but of course the first thing you do after waking up is to find a thing to berate me for!"

Henry shifted slightly on the bed so that he had a better look at his son. "This isn't about berating you for anything."

"Oh no? Then what is this all about?"

"It's about your friends taking turns to watch you over the past days, Shawn. It's about Gus telling me that you've totally neglected your own needs to the point of complete physical exhaustion, that's what it's about!"

Henry was yelling now. It wasn't up to his normal standards as far as yelling was concerned, and it left him short of breath. Shawn might have noticed it, but he was still pacing the length of the room with his eyes on the floor.

"I'm not a five-year old who needs constant surveillance. I think I know how much my body can handle. So I'm sorry if I was worried about you, it certainly won't happen again!"

When there was no immediate reply, Shawn turned back towards the bed.

"Dad?"

His father was a lot paler than a moment ago, and gasping for air. Shawn hurried over towards the bed and started pushing the call-button for the nurse.

"Dad? Come on, what's wrong?"

Henry didn't answer, but the beeping of the heart-monitor became more frantic, and a moment later the door to the room opened and a nurse came hurrying in.

"What is going on here? Mr. Spencer, what's wrong?"

Henry didn't answer, but obviously the nurse hadn't expected him to. With efficient movements she fixed the oxygen mask back on Henry's face, checked the IV and injected something into the drip. After a minute or two, the spikes on the heart-monitor grew less erratic and Henry's breathing came easier.

"Under no circumstances are you to get excited, Mr. Spencer. Your pneumonia isn't something to take lightly, your lungs aren't up for any stress right now. I want you to keep that oxygen mask right where it is, understood?"

Henry nodded and the nurse turned back towards Shawn. "One more episode like that and I'll kick you out, is that understood? I had the impression you wanted your father to get better, not worse. Stop getting him excited or you're out of here, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am", Shawn mumbled, and with a last iron glare the nurse turned and left the room again. Shawn sank back down into his previously vacated chair and covered his face with his hands.

"Sorry", he mumbled. "You're right, maybe I should just go."

He made move to get up from the chair again, but Henry's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Shawn…"

His voice came out muffled under the oxygen mask, and with his free hand Henry reached up and pulled it off again.

"Dad, that nurse seemed pretty serious about keeping the mask on. Besides, I'm pretty sure she just gave you something that'll knock you out, anyway."

Henry shook his head. "Just a moment." He drew a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologise. I'm pretty sure you're no longer dying or anything, so there's really no need to get all emotional."  
Henry shook his head. "I'm sorry for worrying you."

Shawn shrugged, uncomfortably. "What happened isn't really your fault."

"It is. Sinclair said he'd go after you next. Because he blames me for what happened to his son. And I couldn't stop him. I couldn't have helped you."

"Doesn't make it your fault, really", Shawn said. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the way this conversation was going. His Dad yelling at him was terra firma, Shawn knew how to deal with that. This, however, was uncharted waters, and his own emotions were still boiling far too close to the surface for comfort.

"I thought you were dead, all right? Everybody kept telling me you were dead, until I believed it. So no matter what, I prefer the way things turned out to that alternative. So what if I missed a couple of hours of sleep? Doesn't really matter in the greater picture. Besides, you yelled at me, which I take as a sure indicator that you're on your way to getting better again. So I'll just go home and get some sleep now."

Henry smiled slightly, his lids already drooping close. "That was all I told you to do in the first place."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and you always need to have the last word, don't you? That's probably why you left about a hundred messages on my answering machine."

Henry's smile widened. "Probably, yes. Or maybe we should just figure out a different way of communicating. Instead of fighting, I mean."

Shawn laughed. "What, and break with a thirty-year old tradition? Nah. Where would be the fun in that?"

Henry was already half-asleep, but the smile stayed on his face at Shawn's words.

"We'll talk tomorrow", Shawn said. "When you're not all drugged up. How's that sound?"

Henry nodded wordlessly, and with a smile Shawn reached for the oxygen mask to place it back over his father's face.

"Tomorrow", Henry mumbled with his eyes finally closed.

"Yes, tomorrow. Now you sleep so that I can finally go home. I got about a week of sleep to catch up on."

"Love you", was the soft reply, and those two words stopped Shawn in mid-movement, the oxygen mask still an inch away from his father's face. Henry, he noticed, was fast asleep already, and Shawn swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. Because suddenly, all their fighting and the shouting didn't seem really important anymore.

"Yeah, I love you, too."

He fixed the mask back in place over his father's nose and mouth and straightened up. "Good night, Dad."

Henry didn't react, the medication had already taken him off into a deep slumber. With a last look at his father sleeping peacefully on the bed, Shawn turned and left the hospital room. He needed to catch up with Gus before his friend left, he needed a ride home.


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue – ****There was no need to tell your mother about this…**

"Shawn, I'm not an invalid."

Henry defiantly glared at his son and made move to get up from the sofa. Shawn jumped forward and tried to push his father down by the shoulders, but Henry shook his hands off.

"The doctor said no strenuous activities. Which, just because I love reminding you about it, includes absolutely no yelling."

Henry glared at Shawn again and got up from the sofa despite his son's protests. "I'll save the yelling for later, don't you worry about that. But I'm fairly sure that the doctor didn't want me to be back at the hospital within a day because I caught a case of food poisoning. So if you don't mind, I'll go into the kitchen and make dinner now."

Shawn watched as his father brushed past him and vanished into the kitchen. In fact, he was a little glad that the fight was back in his father. During the past days at the hospital, he had seen his father too subdued or too exhausted once too often, he was glad that his physical condition had improved enough for him to be released. Besides, it gave him the once in a lifetime chance to turn the tables and tell his father what to do. He didn't worry about his father exhausting himself while preparing dinner, but it was too much fun to tell him that he was actually in no condition to do so.

As he turned around, Gus came out of the kitchen. "I thought you wanted to take care of dinner. What's your father doing in there pulling out pots and pans?"

Shawn shrugged. "He insisted."

Shawn wasn't entirely sure, but he thought that a look of relief crossed his friend's face at those words. He decided to ignore it and led the way back into the kitchen. Henry was already chopping up things at the counter, and for a moment Shawn just watched his father. He had lost a couple of pounds during the past week and a half, and some signs of what he had been through were still visible, like his eye that was still slightly swollen, and the cuts on his forehead and back of his head which were still healing. But he was looking quite healthy again, and that was what counted most.

"Anything you need help with?", Shawn asked.

Henry looked up and raised both eyebrows at the question. "You're offering to help me? In the kitchen?"

Shawn nodded. "Sure. It's no big deal, right?"

Henry suppressed a grin. "Even if you have to use a whisk?"

Shawn raised both ands, palms up, as if to ward off something evil. "There are some definite borders I'll never cross, Dad. Whisk away for all you like, but don't involve me in it."

Henry grinned and continued to chop peppers. Shawn sat down at the kitchen table and had just comfortably settled on doing nothing for a while when suddenly his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered without bothering to check the caller ID.

"Hello?"

Whatever the person on the other end of the line said, it was enough to make Shawn pale and stutter.

"Could you…just a moment, all right?"

He pulled the phone off his ear and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "Damn."

"What is it?", Gus asked.

"It's Mom."

"Damn", Gus agreed wholeheartedly. Henry, however, didn't seem to understand what his son and Gus were so worried about. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and came over towards the table.

"What's the problem about your mother calling you? Here, let me, I haven't spoken to her in ages."

Before Shawn knew what was happening his father had pulled the phone out of his hands and had brought it up to his ear.

"Margaret? It's Henry."

The scream that came through the line sounded clearly through the entire kitchen, and Henry quickly pulled the phone away from his ear.

"Shawn, what's going on here?"

Shawn got up from his chair and hurried over to his father's side. "Well, right now Mom is probably asking herself since when there are phone lines in hell."

He tried to pull the phone out of his father's grasp, but Henry held on tightly.

"You told her I was _dead_?"

"It seemed like a good idea ", Shawn hissed, "seeing that it was the general consensus at the time. I thought it qualified as news she might be interested in."  
Henry finally relented his rip on the phone and Shawn quickly brought it up to his ear. "Mom? Mom, listen, I know this all sounds weird right now. It's a long story, really, but the bottom line is it was a huge misunderstanding. No, I can't explain in a few words how such a misunderstanding can happen. Yes, I could have called you earlier, I'm sorry. I promise I'll call you tonight and explain it all in detail, but right now I need to stop Dad from killing me. Bye Mom."

He hung up and tossed the phone onto the kitchen table as if it might bite him. Henry stared at him for a few long seconds, clearly at a loss for words.

"You called your _mother_?", he finally brought out.

"Well, yes. I called her. You know, I figured she might want to know that her ex-husband and father to her only child had supposedly drowned at sea."

Henry leaned back against the counter. "And yet you didn't figure that she might want to know that I am still alive?"

Shawn raised his hands. "Don't start that with me, all right? I had quite a number of things on my mind over the past week, I forgot."

"You forgot to tell your mother that your father is still alive", Henry stated, his voice filled with disbelief.

"Yes. I'm sorry, all right? It won't happen again."

Henry shook his head. "If this wasn't the weirdest thing I ever heard, it'd be funny."  
"Believe me, it is", Gus chortled. He stopped immediately when both Spencer men turned to glare at him. He shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, from my perspective it is", he mumbled, obviously glad when a knock on the back door saved him from saying anything else. Shawn turned towards the door.

"I'll get it."

He left the kitchen and went into the living room. When he opened the door, he was surprised to find himself face to face with Carlton Lassiter.

"Lassie! Now that's a surprise. What can I do for you on this fine day? We got a case?"

Lassiter frowned. "_We_ don't have anything. _I_ have a case, but that's not why I am here." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a plastic bag. "I'm here because of this."

He held the bag out to Shawn, who took it with a disbelieving frown. "You brought my Dad's toothbrush back? The toothbrush you used to try and identify a dead body in Ventura?"

Lassiter sighed. "The toothbrush we didn't use to identify the body. And I didn't bring it back because I thought your father might like it back, but because it's protocol to return items submitted for identification to their owners. I don't want to be accused of breaking protocol, Spencer."

Shawn shook his head. "Of course not. Breaking protocol, that's a sin right?"

Lassiter rolled his eyes. "Spencer. Don't start this with me."

Shawn laughed. "Oh come on, Lassie. Protocol, sure." He put the fingers of his right hand against his temple. "I'm getting something here. I'm getting excuse. Lame excuse. Listen Lassie, if you want to come and visit my Dad, you don't need to invent a near-breach in protocol to come here with lights flashing."

Lassiter was gnashing his teeth so hard that Shawn thought he might actually break something if he applied just a little more pressure to his jaw. Suddenly, Lassiter's hand shot out, grabbed Shawn by the wrist and pulled him down from the porch and onto the lawn.

"Listen Spencer, and listen closely because I am not going to repeat myself. We both know that you're not a psychic. So don't insult my intelligence by keeping up this little charade when nobody else is there to impress with this _nonsense_."

Shawn stopped short at the acid tone in Lassiter's voice and the emphasis on the last word. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean? By _nonsense_, you mean? Well, I don't know, but it's the word you used yourself the last time I asked whether you were having a "vision". But maybe you don't really remember because at that time you were busy recalling the smallest details from an event that lies over twenty years in the past."

Shawn swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. At that time, he hadn't even thought about what he was saying. The important thing at that time had been finding his father, he hadn't been paying attention to every word he had said.

While Shawn was still busy trying to figure out what he was going to respond to Lassiter's accusations, the detective continued.

"So consider this your last warning, Spencer. I don't know how you're doing it, exactly. But if I had a little more proof than the slip of the tongue of somebody who wasn't in his right state of mind at the time, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, but to the Chief. I know that I'll get my proof, Spencer. Sooner or later you're going to screw up, and once that happens I promise you I'll be right there to expose you for the fraud you are."

And without waiting for an answer, Lassiter turned around and stormed back towards his car. Shawn stared after the detective for a moment, then he shook his head and went back into the house. Lassiter had been sceptical before, that one slip of the tongue certainly hadn't given him any ammunition he could use as proof.

His father was still busy fixing dinner when Shawn returned into the kitchen and tossed the plastic bag with the toothbrush on the kitchen table.

"Who was that?", Henry asked.

"Lassiter."

"What did he want? Why didn't you ask him in?"

Shawn shook his head and sank down in one of the kitchen chairs. "He needed to get going. He only came here to drop this off."

Henry put the lid back on a pot and came over towards the table. "Is that my toothbrush, Shawn?"

Shawn sighed. "Yes, it is."

"What exactly is Lassiter doing with my toothbrush, can you explain that to me?"

"I got you a new one, isn't that enough? It's in the bathroom upstairs, right where it's supposed to be, so how about we just forget about it?"

He took the plastic bag and tossed it into the trash bin.

"Shawn, I'm gone for a week and you start handing out my personal items? What for?"

Shawn pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and stared at the wall. "You want to know for what reason I gave Lassiter your toothbrush?" He turned back towards his father. "He needed it to identify a body that washed up in Ventura a few days after you vanished, all right? That's why I gave him the toothbrush. I would have given him your hairbrush, but let's face it, the only person Lassiter could have identified with that would have been Kojak. So excuse me for wanting to know whether or not I had a funeral to organise!"

Shawn stormed out of the room and up the stairs before his father had a chance to say anything else.

"Damn", Henry grumbled and went back to the stove.

"Mr. Spencer?"

Henry drew a deep breath. "Yes, Gus?"

"I know it's not really my place, but…"

"But what?", Henry asked and turned to face his son's friend. For the first time in many years, Gus didn't cower under Henry's stare. He drew a deep breath.

"What happened was hard on Shawn. You didn't see him when Lassiter dropped by and told him about the body that washed ashore. He was barely hanging on for the days until you were found, and honestly, I don't think that kind of conversations is really helping either of you right now."

Henry ran a hand through his short hair and sighed. He didn't want to fight with his son, either, but it simply happened, seemingly whenever they started talking to each other.

"Watch the stove for a moment, will you?"

Gus nodded and Henry followed his son up the stairs. He found Shawn where he had thought he would – in his old childhood bedroom, pacing angrily in front of the window. Henry stepped in and leaned against the doorjamb with his shoulder.

"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."

Shawn stopped his pacing and interlaced the fingers of his hands behind his head. "That your way of apologising?"

"Maybe. Listen Shawn, we both know I'm not particularly good at this."

Shawn laughed. "No, you're definitely not."

"Neither are you, for that matter."

"No, maybe not."

Henry sighed. "I'm sorry that you had to go through all this."

Shawn ran his hands through his hair. "Listen, Dad, we've been through his. It wasn't your fault."

"Yeah, but it sure feels different." Henry shook his head. "How about we just try to have a quiet dinner for once."

Shawn nodded with a slight smile. "Sounds like it's worth giving it a try."

Henry led their way back down into the kitchen where Gus was standing at the stove, nervously watching the pots boiling away merrily.

"I think the potatoes are done."

Henry took over and started checking on the food. "All right kids, set the table. Dinner is ready."

They ate in near-silence, but that didn't have anything to do with the previous toothbrush-confrontation. Rather, it had to do with both Shawn and Gus wolfing down their food as if it was the last meal they'd ever be granted. When they were done, Gus pushed his chair back and folded his hands across his stomach.

"That was good, Mr. Spencer."

"Thank you, Gus. Now, what are the two of you planning for the rest of the day?"

Shawn shrugged. "I don't know. Isn't there a game on tonight?"

Henry shook his head. "Oh no, Shawn."

"Oh no what?"

"Oh no you're not going to baby-sit me. I'll tell you again that I'm not an invalid." He started putting the plates together and got up from his chair. Placing the plates onto the counter, he turned back towards the stairs. "In fact, I already have plans for tonight. But of course, if the two of you want to stay, you can help. I've been meaning to get Shawn to help me with this for ages, anyway."

A frown started to show on Shawn's face as his father went over towards the stairs. "What are you talking about, Dad?"

"I'm talking about all those boxes of yours in the attic. We're going to get them down, you'll sort through all the stuff that's been collecting dust up there for decades, and then I can finally throw out all the stuff you no longer need." Halfway on the stairs already, Henry turned again. "You know what? I think it's a great idea. We can watch the game and still get something done. I'll go get the first box."

He vanished up the stairs, and Shawn sank back in his chair with a groan.

"Great. Here I am worrying about my father's health, and he turns it into a chore of tidying up."

Gus shook his head. "Shawn, I don't think that's your biggest problem right now."

"No? Then what is?"

"Your father is on his way to the attic now."

Shawn shrugged. "I know. So what?"

"You remember what happened in that attic a few days ago? That little fit of destruction you had?"

Shawn's eyes widened. "Damn. I wanted to clean that up, but I totally forgot!"

"Well, your father is about to find out in a few moments."

Shawn got up from his chair and grabbed his jacket. "Come on Gus, we need to get going!"

"What?"

"I certainly won't stick around to wait for my Dad to see the chaos up there!"

Gus got up from his own chair and reached for his jacket when a yell sounded through the house.

"Shawn! What happened up here?"

Gus was already hurrying out the door, but Shawn couldn't help turning towards the stairs once more. "Remember Dad", he yelled upstairs. "Absolutely no yelling! Doctor's orders!"

He was jerked into hurrying out of the house again by Gus' hand on his arm, and together the two of them ran out to Gus' car. When they pulled out of the driveway, Henry's face appeared in an upstairs window.

"You are going to clean that up, Shawn! You're going to glue every single shard back together, and if it takes you years! Do you hear me, Shawn? You're going to clean that up!"

Shawn buckled his seatbelt. "Go Gus, go!"

"Sooner or later you're going to have to face him again, you know?"

"I do, Gus. But I'll give him some time to cool off first. A few days should be enough. Maybe a week."

"Shawn!"

Checking the rear-view mirror, Shawn found his father on the street now, a threatening first raised after them. Shawn shook his head and tore his eyes away form the mirror. "Maybe two weeks. Just keep going Gus, before he gets it into his head to take the truck and follow us."

Gus shook his head and kept on driving. The most disturbing thing was that this wasn't the first time he and Shawn had left Henry's house like that. Things were finally back to normal.


End file.
